The next part of the bench I worked on were the short stretchers.  The stretchers run front-to-back between each legs at the top and bottom, 4 total.

The milling process is exactly the same as before.  Mill each piece, rip each piece to width, laminate, mill each laminate to 4  square.  These laminations were 3 pieces each.

A couple pictures I took along the way

While this was drying I started on the long stretchers, but I will get to that in my next post.

Leg Length

After milling the laminations, I was able to start cutting the pieces to final length including the tenons.  I am planning on a two inch deep tenon for the leg to top joint.  I was limited in height by my shortest piece in my leg laminations.  So each leg was 33 11/16 tall, 4 3/4 wide and 5 1/16 thick (lamination thicknesses).

I cut the final length with my table saw due to the past experience with the band saw.  The piece has to be rotated 180 after the first cut to get teh full thickness.  I marked the line a half way around the leg and did the best I could with aligment.  It would have been a good time for a long fence and stop block.  At the end ofthe day this will be the tenon end and it won’t really affect anything.  The picture below should have been taken from the other side to show the setup.  Essentially I have the Incra Miter 1000SE with a melamine fench attached and I am using the hand screw to make sure the leg doesnt slide when being cut.  I only had these clamps left because the rest were being used up by the long stretchers and deadman glue ups.

Short Stretcher Length

Next up were the short stretchers.   I had to account for the tenon size before cutting them to length.  I decided on a 1″ thick, 2 1/2 tall, 2 1/4 deep tenon.  Since I wanted the bench to be about 30 inches wide, I subracted the leg thicknesses from 30, yielding 19 7/8 and adding back 4 1/2 for the two tenons.  The short stretcher length was 24 3/8.  They were much simpler to cut because I could cut them in one pass.  My short stretchers are 2 5/8 thick, 4 1/32 tall and 24 3/8 long.

Mortise Layout

Next step was to layout the mortises and tenons for the short stretcher to leg joints.  The mortise layout is pretty straightforward, or so I thought.  Grab a couple combination squares and get to it.  I wanted my upper stretchers to be flush with the bottom of the benchtop, so it would have more support.  I wanted my lower stretcher to be around 4″ off the ground for toe clearance.  All stretchers will be even with teh outside surface of the legs.

Creating Mortises

I laid all 8 mortises out and set up my drill press with a 1″ forstner bit and started removing material.  Notice the roller support in  a Craftsman Jawhorse for support.  My roller stand didn’t go high enough, so I pulled out the roller part and put in the jawhorse..

After I drilled my second mortise for the upper stretchers  I realized I made a really stupid mistake.  I didn’t account for the tenon height at the top of the leg.  There will be two inches inserted into the workbench top and I glossed over that in my layout.  The leg on the left is correct.  I will fill the oopsie later on.

After all the drilling, time for removing the corners to make the mortises rectangular.  I am no expert on chisel work, its ugly.  The only item of advice is to start chopping across the grain and then with the grain.  Check everything with a square now, it will save you trouble down the road.

Next up are the long stretchers, deadman and vise chop prep jointing.