Flattening the bench

Workbenches.  We've all got them in one form or another, whether they're an old door on a couple of sawhorses, or a massive roubo made from exotic wood, hand cut by the natives of Pongo Pongo.  We chisel on them, saw on them, plane on them, assemble on them, finish on them, even eat and drink at them.  For something that takes that much abuse, they're remarkably low maintenance.

Shortly after I took up the hobby, I decided I needed a workbench.  I'd been working on a couple of sawhorses and a half sheet of mdf and it worked, but wasn't enough.  Money was tight, and getting my hands on an awful lot of maple was beyond my budget.  Not to mention I hadn't even worked with maple at that point, and wasn't confident I could build a bench, certainly not for the several hundred dollars in lumber it would have cost to attempt and fail.

An hour or so into the process

Luckily, Popular Woodworking had recently put out a special issue all about workbenches. The issue had several designs, one of which struck my eye.  This guy named Chris Schwarz, who I'd never heard of, had an article and a plan about building an inexpensive workbench from construction lumber.  Not just construction lumber but southern yellow pine, a very common lumber where I live in North Texas.  Pricing out the plan, I figured it'd cost me a little over $200 if I went for the fancy quick release vise.  I could afford that, and if I mucked it up too badly well I could probably eBay that vise.

I dutifully went to my local big box store and picked out my lumber, jointed it, planed it and poured my heart and soul into it.  All told it took me about a month and in the end I had a workbench.  There were a few mistakes but it was a workbench.  I was thrilled. Now I knew I had to flatten it.  I'd read that somewhere.  People used crazy contraptions with their routers to flatten stuff, some crazy old nuts even used handplanes.  Seriously.  Handplanes!  What did they think we lived in the 1800's?  I didn't own a router at the time, and the handplane I owned (as if!) was some piece of crap Buck Brothers which couldn't cut anything.  But I did have a belt sander.  Belt sander fixes all!  So I dutifully went at my lovely new bench with a belt sander, those areas that refused to flatten, I just dug down and pushed harder, that'd make it flat.

This wasn't even the worst area!

When I was done I was thrilled, the fact that the neighborhood kids came by a couple of days later with their skateboards asking if they could use my new skate park didn't register with me.  I just figured they had the wrong address. 

I did everything on that bench  I used it as an outfeed table for my first tablesaw, I built stuff on it (some stuff even turned out ok), I finished on it, I even bought some chisels and waterstones and learned to sharpen on it. 

It's flat! and back in it's normal home.

Until this past weekend, I'd never properly flattened my bench, and it was about time.  The esteemed mister Schwarz, in one of his books mentioned it takes him about forty-five minutes to flatten a benchtop.  I can only imagine he's just saying that to sound cool, or he's never encountered anything like my bench.

Going across the grain, it took me a full day, my trusty foreplane (good ole Stanley #6) and a couple of resharpenings to get the rough flattening done.  In some areas the top was so out of flat that I'd have needed a 1/4" feeler gauge to run under a straightedge.  From there, diagonal passes with my #7 and then full passes with the same took about an hour.  I'm guessing that's where Chris gets the forty-five minute figure from.

There's a little minor tear-out, but nothing impacting the use, and a couple of plane marks I didn't bother getting out.  Serendipity struck again.  I was in the middle of grabbing my smoother, while listening to Marc Spagnolo's interview of the once again mentioned Chris Schwarz and it was at that moment where Chris mentioned after he flattens there's a little tearout and a few plane marks and he does nothing about it.  I was pooped and if it was good enough for the Schwarz it would be good enough for me.

As for the belt sander.  It's been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years since I last used it.  Me I'll stick with my planes.