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TOP

Before I could glueup the pieces for the top, I had to cut out the square dog holes. I decided to use Veritas square bench dogs. I initially planned to make the top 2½” thick, but I changed my mind. The Veritas bench dogs work best when the top is about 3″ thick (anything less than about 2¾” and the spring won’t hold it properly when you try to hold it just above the level of the bench top). So… by the time all the flattening was done, mine probably ended up being about 2-7/8″ or so thick.

I chose a 3° angle for the square dog holes instead of the 2° specified in the Veritas instructions, so the faces of the dogs would lean just a bit further toward each other instead of being straight perpendicular to the bench surface. I made a 3° angle wedge to go in my old crosscut sled, and set up the dado blade to match the dimensions of the bench dog. I cut a notch in the wedge, which holds a “key” to maintain proper spacing between the dog holes (6½” O.C). Once this was setup just like I wanted it, I just screwed the wedge to the sled from below, to keep it from moving.

Once I had all the dadoes cut, I had to cut out a notch in each one to clear the face of the dog. I made this router jig out of a piece of ¼” plywood and a scrap wood fence to cut these notches.

These dog holes turned out just like I wanted them to – the bench dogs drop down below the surface when not in use, are fairly easy to move but very snug so they stay put when in use. These bench dogs have a spring which keeps them from falling through, and I can position them as low as 1/16″-1/8″ if I want to. This shows the dry fit:

Someone on the NCWoodworker.net forums recommended that I round over the ledge in the square dog holes, to keep them from collecting dust. A few quick swipes with the chisel is all it took to change the profile of that little ledge in the dog holes:

I did not cut the round dog holes until after the top was all glued up and the front vise was mounted. In retrospect, it might have been easier to go ahead and pick three of the boards and drill the round dog holes before glueup. Maybe next time….

I did most of the flattening in my benchtop planer. I glued up the laminations in two sections that were just under 12″ each so they could fit through my planer.

The benchtop planer really worked just fine. Before getting started, I waxed the bed again to help things slide through easily. Once the two pieces were planed down to the same thickness, they were glued together. I had to do just a little edge jointing prior to gluing the two sections together.

Once the top was all glued up, it needed to be trimmed to length. I used this straightedge jig to guide the router to make a 3/4″ rabbet. The jig has parallel guides on the top and the bottom which are lined up exactly with each other. I used a framing square to make sure it was all square. There is a “zero clearance” block on each end as well, to support the router and to prevent chipout (although this wasn’t a problem).

The top was then flipped over to create a rabbet on the bottom, and the whole process was repeated on the other end. I used a jigsaw to trim the waste off the end of the tenons.

At this point I did the final flattening with a wide drum sander (thanks to Woodguy1975). I took the top over to WG’s to run through his Woodmaster. Another lesson learned: if you’re going to run a top like this through a drum sander, do it before you cut the tenons on the ends. The Woodmaster is nice, but it does round over the leading and trailing edges a bit. As a result of this, I ended up having to trim the edges back a bit on each end. Altogether I ended up losing almost 5/8″ of length. But… the top is FLAT. Seriously flat.

I still needed to add one final lamination to my benchtop – the last piece on the back, which makes up the “front wall” of the tool tray. I made that last piece 5″ wide, to give me plenty of depth for a tool tray. I had to custom-fit the tenon on each end, using a variety of hand tools (hand saw, chisels, block plane, rabbet plane). This shows what it looked like before I cut out the tenon:

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