Mini bench: part 2

I left off last time having cut the half-lap joints. Now I wanted to glue them together and pin them. I'm still not sure what, if any, benefit I'll get from pinning, but since the floor of the half-lap joint is so rough from the pine lumber's propensity for splintering, it will give me an extra piece of mind.

As I often do, I first made a template to work off of.

I just used the width of my ruler to figure out where to place the holes from the top and bottom edge, and just placed them an inch in from each side. It seemed a good enough placement.

I drilled the holes.

Then I used the template and drilled the holes, glued up the boards and drove 5/16" dowels through. I could have made my own square or octagonal pins, which I've done before, but one of the guiding principles of this project is quick and dirty, so pre-made dowels is it. I tested one before hand and the dowels were actually quite respectable in terms of roundness and fit into the hole, so they were fine for this use. (though I would still love to have a dowel plate)

After the glue dried and I cut off the pins with my new flush-cut saw (Happy Birthday!) I started to plane down the surfaces to get a nice fit and take off some of the marks that had accumulated from the various operations.

This is where the leg vise really showed its stuff. I was able to clamp up the leg assembly and hold it both at the top and bottom of the leg vise.

Once I figured out where to place the pin in the parallel guide, that sucker held the leg assembly like it was an act of God. I could have been chiseling out mortises, or cutting the very end and it would have held it perfectly still. I really like my leg vise.

As it was, I was merely planing down the edges, and then used the wagon vise to do the faces. Edge, face and ends, that's what you need to be able to do, right Mr. Schwarz?

Overall my bench works beautifully. I do need to get my sliding deadman in place for my next project as I'll be making a longer table top, but for this small project, it couldn't have been better.

After finishing the planing I just set the mini bench on top of my own with the top just sitting on the legs. Now the top of the legs will be mortised into the top, so it will sit further down onto the cross piece.

As you can see, the joints are tight, but not terribly pretty. That's what happens when you go fast using cheap wood.

After putting it together like this, I decided that I need to make it a little wider. The proportions weren't quite right, and I think it will be more useful for what he does, which is mainly whacking on wood and storing his (one) tool on his bench. (his hammer) I'm also seriously considering flipping the legs upside down and putting the stretcher across the bottom. We'll see where I go with this next time.