hedge42

When I played serious golf in college my coach would always say..'a good putter will find a way to get the ball in the hole with a broomstick.' The same adage holds true for hand planes...give me a decent $50 Stanley whatever off of Ebay and about 2 hours to refurbish it and I will be producing the same results as a Lie-Neilsen out of the box for considerably more money. You cannot buy talent or feel...some of both are needed to obtain results in the woodshop or on the golf course.

Mike,

I made a similar style bench top out of oak glued up in sections out of 1" x 2.5" boards. I threw in 2 dark Ipe boards in the middle to add some stripes of visual interest to the 28" wide slab. I made some cauls out of oak and lag bolts to maintain the slab in alignment. Even with very careful alignment and 4 cauls over a 70" length, I still was left with a slight bow. I chaulked it up to ever so slight bowing of the individual boards. Wood is wood after all, it cannot be machined to the tolerances of steel.

There is a certain satisfaction to polishing the bevel of a plane iron, tuning the plane, and then zipping off whisper thin shavings. The feel of that iron slicing through the wood grain is immensely gratifying. Sometimes I'll true up a board that doesn't need it, just to gain that feeling and refocus my mind on woodworking.

Nevertheless, I trued up the slab with my Bedrock 5.5, installed a Cherry apron held together with pins, Veritas twin screw on one end, a Record 53 on the side, and drilled some dog holes. I'm in the process of adding drawers and shelves to the base. The top is held to the base (left from a previous bench) by its weight and a couple dowels in drilled holes. At over 150#+, the top is plenty solid on the base and once drawer and tool weight is added to the base the bench will not be going anywhere, even under the most aggressive lateral force.

Good Luck