Some notes and images on how I made a sturdy saw bench for ripping and cutting wood. The project was finalized 16th of July 2017.

It all started with a pile of lumber. More precisely some 2x3 and 2x6 pine construction wood that was cut to length using a japanese saw. To make precise cuts I made knife walls, see the end of the lower left piece in the image. These guides the cuts and makes cutting square much easier.

After the pieces were cut to length I stacked them to get a glimse on what the final dimensions whould be like. I was fairly satisfied with the result so there was no need for futher adjustments.

On the top of the legs I made these big and fancy dovetails. The slope is about 1 to 6 if my memory is correct. A suitable angle for softwoods like pine.

After some fiddling with chisels and some cursing I managed to fit two legs to a top.

To secure the legs to the feet I started by marking the mortise with a knife...

...then it was just to start digging with a chisel.

And digging some more.

Now it's time to turn the pice and go from the other side.

Then - "break on through to the other side" and some more chisel work to square up the sides.

3/4 of the legs in place. Here you can see the take outs for the dovetails on the beams between the legs. The beams have a single dovetail.

The gluing process has begun. In the back the legs of the second half of the bench is glued to the top. In the front the beam is glued to the legs of the first half of the bench.

Almost done. The second beam is glued to the legs.

At last the bench is assembled and touched up with a plane to smoothen out all protruding joints.

First coat of boild linseed oil is applied. Later a second layer was applied. If you look closely you can see the small feet of oak I added to make the bench less wobbly and more durable.

The finished bench!

It was a really fun project to implement. The dovetails were a bit intimidating but worked out pretty well. It's really nice to have a sturdy bench when sawing. A practical and imho beautiful tool to have in the shop.

/Carpenterson