Charlton Bench Shaping
Before getting too far ahead with the shaping of the bench top, the holes for the staked legs need to be drilled while the wood is still flat. There is a handy jig at HCS that when clamped to a drill press it lets you plunge a forstner bit at a proper angle for a standard staked piece of furniture. There's no measuring or calculations involved at all, its just eyeballing which is music to my ears. The forstner bit bores a cylndrical hole in the wood which needs to be tapered after with a reaming bit so a conical shaped tenon at the end of a leg can be pounded into the hole. Shoot, no pictures for this step.. Next, I used an electric planer to create the round over along the edges of the bench. This worked really well, this tool is awesome for rough shaping. The round over is a 3 ¼”radius and to make it as accurate as possible, I cut a template from plywood and used that as a gauge to keep checking my work as I slide the planer along the edges. Here's a look at the progress whi...
