I’m fortunate to have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off work, and that affords me the opportunity to spend some quality time out in the garage, working on various projects. I knocked together a little cart for a new drill press using leftover wood from the workbench project. I was also able to build in some extra storage, which is always welcome in the workshop. My other big project was to plane down the Sitka spruce I picked up in early November.

The boom is “done.” Well, there’s a couple of things I’ll need to do before actually rigging it, but I’m calling it done. According to this very blog, it was way back in July when I started to apply finish to the boom parts. In the intervening months, I put a bunch of coats of varnish (D2) on the boom. I didn’t exactly keep track of how many coats, but the boom itself seems well covered.

When last I reported on the workbench, I’d flipped it right side up, applied some finish, and drilled the dog holes. My next step was to install the shelf boards. Like everything else in the bench, they’re made up of 1¼" boards. The only trick was to notch out two boards to fit around the legs, which wasn’t too tough. I didn’t bother to screw them into cleats. I suspect gravity will keep them in place just fine.

You know how, in the last post, I decried the price of Sitka Spruce and hatched a plan to make the mast out of fir instead? Well, Reader, I bought the spruce. Now, you might ask why I paid $20 a board foot? The short answer is that I already had about 40% of what I needed in Sitka Spruce, and so it turned out to be about the same price to keep going with the spruce instead of starting over with fir.

Remember that boat I’m building? The one this blog is ostensibly about? Well, I haven’t forgotten about it, despite the litany of workbench posts. In between putting the finishing touches on the workbench (of which there will be one more post when all is said and done), I’ve been slowly chipping away on boat projects. Specifically, I’ve been varnishing the boom and associated parts. There’s not much to say about that, though the phrase “watching paint dry” comes to mind.

I’d been a bit worried about how exactly I was going to flip the bench over, but between my wife and teenage son, we were able to get it flipped over with no injuries to either the workbench or the workers. Below, you can see it in the permanent location under the one window in the garage. Fits just perfectly in the space. (It’s almost like I measured and planned it!

The next big task I had was to drill two holes into the front (and back) of the benchtop in front of each leg. The holes are for the drawbores (pegs) that help keep the whole thing together. I once again used my drill guide, only this time clamped to the side of the top, and propped up with some scrap wood. This method worked pretty well. (We’re going to ignore the holes for one of the back legs that are slightly askew.

(Don’t let the one day between posts fool you. The last post reflected about a month’s worth of work, and this one was about a week’s worth, including a long weekend.) After gluing up the stretchers, I needed to clean them up before trying to fit them to the legs. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to get the two boards perfectly aligned, and, of course, there was glue squeeze-out.

It’s been about a month since my last post, but I haven’t been idle as we enter the dog days of summer. When last I reported on my progress, I’d just glued the three sections of the benchtop together. The glue-up was mostly successful, although if I had to do it over again I’d have jointed the faces that were glued. The gaps between the three sections aren’t bad, but in spots they are slightly wider than the rest of the joints.

The next step in the workbench project was to take the 20 boards I’d bought for the benchtop into the Tool Library shop and mill them to size. Neighbor Joel and I threw the boards into the back of his truck, and headed to the shop. Knowing that the wood I’d bought wasn’t of the highest quality (it was #2 lumber, all Douglas Fir), I’d bought a couple of extra boards.