The "Skansen" bench pt. 2

The weather has been pleasant recently, so rather than stay cooped up in the dark basement storage area I've been out riding my bike when I've had a moment to spare. But the rains came yesterday so I addressed the bench again.

The legs needed to be cleaned and squared up after the jigsaw, and the compound curves provided a challenge I'd never dealt with before.

Fortunately I had this small wooden compass plane I'd bought at a flea market last fall. It cost nothing and was cute, but has been mostly just on display as a curiosity until now. Getting it tuned up took some work as the blade was rusted into place, but popping it in the freezer for a half hour or so helped free it up.  The radius isn't quite right, so the resulting surface is a little choppy. I hope to tune the plane up more to do a final smoothing before assembly.

The convex surfaces I addressed with the simple wooden smoothing plane. It's nice and sharp, and light, and leaves a very refined surface.

I then proceeded to mark and cut the tenons. I could arguably have used a more aggressive handsaw for this job, but chose the tenon saw and a 3/4" chisel. I cut the cheeks with the saw and pared to the line rather than risk chopping them out.

Work holding worked fine in the vise despite the funny shapes. I didn't notice any damage to the legs, but the surfaces need to be further refined anyway. First though: through mortises in the bench top!