Woodworking Workbench - Legs and Mortises
One of the best decisions I made was to swap out the big box cedar 4x4s to local lumber yard furniture grade 4x4s. They are high quaity with very few knots and best of all S4S. This means I can go straight to sizing and using them.
Going forward, many of the decisions I make will be galvanized into the final product. The length of these legs will determine the final height, so after a lot of reading and measuring I settled on cutting them to 30” which gave the workbench a height of about 34 1/2”. I decided that it needed to be lower than the ‘standard’ counter height of 36” - this would allow me to use some body weight transfer when planning and chopping.
Measure twice and cut once - 30” legs are ready. Next up, chopping some mortises; something I have never done and I’m about take on the challenge by attempting them on 3 1/2” thick lumber.
Time to play around and do some test to see which method will work best. Here are the ones I attempted:
Use a Forstner Bit to remove majority of the material and pair down the rest with a bench chisel. This was a challenge because I am still learning how to angle the chisel and apply the right amount of force with the mallet.
Using Paul Sellers method to use a bevel/bench chisel. This works very well for the first 1/2” to 1”, but beyond that it became a challenge to make sure the chisel tracked straight and didn’t twist.
Purchased a 1/2” mortise chisel - the right tool for the job. From the first few chops, this was the most ergonomic and speedy way to get through the material.
Now all I have left to do with measure, mark and chop 8 of these. Cue some podcasts and noise cancelling headphones!
The 10” mitre saw made quick work of cutting the 4x4s down to size.
Drilling most of the waste out with a 1” forstner bit and trying to pair down the rest with a chisel.
Applying the Paul Sellers technique of chopping a mortise with a bevel edge/bench chisel.
First attempting at using a 1/2” mortise chisel to get a through mortise. Not too bad!!