It's covered in flour but that means it's being used!
Mobile Prep Bench
I struck a deal with my roommates that in exchange for unfettered access to the basement for woodworking, I would build counter-height surfaces for food preparation in our kitchen (which severely lacked counter space). The mobile prep bench was the first project I took on to get our kitchen up to snuff. It was designed to fit snugly between the oven and the refrigerator, offering adjacent access to the stove top. Additionally, the legs are fitted with casters, allowing it to be wheeled into the living room to watch Netflix, while chopping ingredients for dinner. The bench doubles as a bar cart for the few occasions in which our apartment decides to entertain.
Required Resources: 15 hours, $175
Size: 32" x 29 x 36" Tall
Materials: Maple, Walnut, Cherry, Titebond III Glue, Insert Nuts, Lockable Casters, Angle Brackets
Finish: "Emmet's Good Stuff" Gel Finish (2 Coats)
Tools: Miter Saw, Band Saw, Orbital Sander, Makita Router with 1/2" mortising bit, 1/2" chisel, 3' bar clamps
New Techniques:
Mortise and Tenon Jointery: It's always fun when I get to try out a new type of jointery for a project. For the prep bench, I decided I would try out mortise and tenon joints for the leg skirt and side braces. A mortise is a blind pocket milled into the face of piece. A tenon is the protrusion on another piece of wood that mates with the mortise on the first piece. To create the mortise, I dusted of the plunge router and bought a mortising bit. I rigged up a jig that created a constant offset from the edge of the piece and limited travel parallel to the edge. Using the plunge feature and running it in the jig, I was able to create a blind pocket of precisely the right length. Since a mortising router bit produces a rounded end, I used a chisel to square off the ends. To create the tenon on the mating piece, I used the band saw to cut the cheeks/ shoulders out and then used a chisel to clean them up. In all I had to cut 12 mortises and 12 tenons to complete the table. It was quite a bit more work than I expected it to be, but satisfying when all was said and done.
Lessons Learned:
Find the Right Tool: At several stages, I found myself trying to take a short cut, using the wrong tool and the wrong technique to get something done immediately. When cutting the tenons, I correctly roughed the cheeks out with the band saw. But then, to save time I tried to clean up the cheeks with the band saw as well. This made a mess of the tenons, causing them to be well undersized and sloppy. The correct technique would have been to clean the tenons with a dado blade fitted to the table saw. I, in fact, own a dado and table saw but was too lazy to set it up. This ended up causing me an extra 2 hours of sanding and finishing to clean up the mess I made here.
When I cut my first mortise, I did it by hand drilling several holes with a Forstner bit and cleaning up the pocket with a chisel. As you can imagine, the mortises were hideous and caused an irregular fit to the mating tenon. That night I order a mortising bit for the router, created a jig and a couple days later, blasted out the other 11 mortises in about an hour.
