Starting the New Bench

The Beech for the new bench has been in the shop for a month or so, it should be reasonably stable as it came out of an AZ warehouse before my shop. I sorted and measured a couple of days ago and this morning with MsOKs help I started truing an edge so I can rip to rough width.

Four boards into the job MsOK pulled a back muscle, that ended work on the bench for today. You got to give the old gal credit she was game to try. I can finish truing an edge and even rip and dimension by myself but it sure is easier with a extra body to help. Once the slab glue up gets more than about eight boards wide a second set of muscles is a must have. I've a couple of helpers available, one was to help today but something else came up....Oh well, the joy of a one man shop.

If all goes as planned and after ripping the Beech doesn't turn into 3 meter bananas it should take 14 boards to get the wanted bench top width of 610mm (24'). I'm rough ripping to 110mm and should end up with a top a little over 100mm (4") thick.

I still haven't settled on a base wood. The Ash in the area is the same price as Soft Maple, both more than I want to pay for base wood but I may end up using Soft Maple. My local wood guy may have some 8/4 Honey Locust for almost $2 a BF less than the Maple and Ash. If it is true then the base will be Honey Locust.

Here are the boards we trued this AM, two 130mm wide and one 240mm wide. At least it's a start.

 

The next 240mm wide board is what did in MsOK's back. Wide and long 8/4 boards will do that.