Bench Update - Bottom's up for the last time...

The finished inlay on the front skirt.

The last month has been a busy time between the UK and California, so I have not had a lot of time to work on the bench project, but it has reached a major milestone today. All the major woodworking is complete; with the end cap, front skirt and end-vise back plate all installed. I felt I should put a coat of finish on the bottom to seal it before I could not get access to it anymore.

View of underside from the back, this will be left open for clamping long materials, and cleaned up once it is flipped.

From the front, the cutout for the Lee valley Quick Release face vise,

Here's a few progress shots on how I got to here:

Inlaying the name plaque for the front

Traced the outline on some tape and the bulk of the material removed with a Forstner drill,
my Blue Spruce chisels and mallets clean up the straight edges and the carving tools for the rest.

After about an hour of fussing, and scared to death I would break it,
 the inlay dropped into place; a bit of bubinga sawdust to
hide my donkey tracks, CA glue to permanently fix it in place,
remove the tape, sand it flush and...

Bob's your uncle (not my uncle, but maybe yours!)

 Mounting the Lee Valley/Veritas Quick Release Face Vise

I have one of these guys on my original bench and and I love it, probably the most used fixture in the shop. I chose to relieve the front skirt to give me more open depth to the vise.

Doing some layout on the filler piece working out the arrangement of the holes.

The filler piece screwed and glued in place, with the rough cut front jaw prepped.
This will support the vise for years of trusty operation.

This was a beast to flip when the front skirt was installed, I will need major help in getting the topside up to finish installing the Twin-screw vise and fix it to the base. Wish me luck...

Bench Project - Breakfast gives you a solid base for your day...

While other projects are more pressing, I am focussed on getting the bench done. Mostly because it takes up a lot of space in the shop and its tough to do other things with it in the way.

The bench will have a trestle base similar to my other workbenches and wall benches. This is efficient, strong and provides lots of space below for storage. I will be building a cabinet with drawers for the base later. Here's a few pics with progress to date.

Cleaning up the inlay for the vertical pieces for the base. Nice curl in this maple.

Laying out to cut some tenons to match the mortises in the horizontal pieces

All the parts laid out to glue up base and the Lee Valley order for all the vises.

Time for some flattening of the top before starting to add the skirts for the 3 sides.

The top flattened and rough sanded, sitting on the base, letting it settle in while the glue finally dries.

Detail shot of legs showing inlay and barrel bolts holding the cross pieces in place.