First use of Roubo a success!!

Anybody who has watched my latest podcast, episode 30, will see that I have already used my Roubo bench even though it is not done yet. After scraping the glue and some light planing to flatten the bottom in preparation for the joinery, I moved the flattened 19″ wide slab onto some saw horses in preparation for squaring up the ends. It is amazing how solid it is just on some cheap plastic saw horses. I could stretch out on it and take a nap and believe me I feel like it right now.

I just put the bench to use filming my process for milling stock to thickness using hand tools only. Using some battens and some clamps for stops, I secured a 12/4, 11″ wide, 30″ long piece of Ash to the top and went to work with Scrub and Jack plane to flattened one side.

It was hard work, but very gratifying to put this slab to work after so much work to get it into it’s current state.

It is also nice to see what kind of space the bench will take up and how I can use it in my small shop. With an 8 foot long bench it will just fit along the back wall under the window. I don’t have much room on either side but enough to reach the end vise wheel so it will be functional. Upon starting out on this build I thought that I would probably use the bench more pulled out perpendicular to the back wall so that is how I have it positioned now. No doubt for heavy hand work the bench should take center stage in the shop so I imagine I will be moving it around a lot. The question now though is whether 8 feet is just too long in my small shop. My gut tells me that if it fits, I should keep it at 8 feet because who knows if I will every move to a bigger shop. Taking some measurements and seeing what it would look like to reduce the length to even 7 feet would make a difference, but I think I will end up regretting it in the long run. So I will keep it at 8 feet. I suppose that with the legs set in so far from the ends that I can always shorten one end later if necessary, but I think that would hurt to do it.