New Yankee Workshop workbench update

I was able to get quite a bit of work done on the bench this weekend. On Saturday I fixed all my dado mistakes and assembled the frame. On Sunday I was able to get all the plywood and hardboard cut down to their proper sizes. This post will cover the building of the frame and I will cover the plywood on the next one.

I did a dry fit of the leg assembly and discovered that I made the dados for the bottom shelf on the wrong side.

I used an existing leg to mark out the cuts on the new ones.

I made sure to mark where I needed to hog out the material this time.

I also rebuilt the dog assembly. I had left the dado stack set at 1/2″ when it was supposed to be 3/8″ deep and I made them the size of a 2×4 wide instead of 1″. I also left out the dog holes at each end because I couldn’t properly hold the pieces when I was cutting them the first time and it wasn’t very safe. I’m sure this will come back to haunt me.

I cut a piece of 2×4 on the mitre saw at 4 degrees to use to set my mitre fence when I cut the dog holes.

There was no mention of this piece in the plan on the NYW book so I marked the corresponding piece to the right and then cut this one. It turns out that I made it 1/4″ too long. When I dry fit it together I could not get this part of the assembly to fit square.

It took me a while to figure out that my mistake was in using this mark to measure the size of the new piece. I made the mark in the middle of the board which was 3/4″ when I needed to account for the depth of the dado which was 1/2″.

The new legs are ready to go! I am going to use the old ones to build an outfeed table for my table saw.

I cut 1/4″ off the crossmember.

Now everything fits and is square.

I also cut the groove in the rear 2×4 for the tool tray. It doesn’t say anywhere in the book but I think that I am going to have to notch the plywood 1/4″ to account for the ends of the 2×4’s.