Popular Woodworking 2009-11 № 179, страница 26

We used yellow glue through most of this project and didn't have any problems. When gluing LVL made using yellow pine, we recommend you keep it clamped at least five hours. Yellow pine has resin that resists glue penetration.

Of course, there are some other important details you should know about when working with this material. We didn't want to run the LVL through the machines any

more than we had to, so we took extra care to line up all the laminations as we clamped them. The extra care paid off, and when we glued the two final 12"-wide laminations together we jointed their mating edges and decided to take an extra precaution: some Dominos.

The Base: Beef & Nuts

This is the simplest base I could design that is both robust and completely functional. Each leg is made from two lengths of 5"-wide LVL that are face-glued. Then you cut half-lap joints in the legs using a dado stack in your table saw and bolt everything together using ¹/2" hex-head bolts, washers and nuts.

Once we got the legs glued up, building the base took less than six hours, and we stopped several times to take pictures (and we got coffee, which is as important as glue in our shop).

Begin by gluing up the legs using pieces that are slightly oversized. Let the adhesive cure, then joint and plane all four legs to a consistent final thickness. The length of your legs is, naturally, what will determine how tall your workbench is. The cutting list and drawings will produce a benchtop that is 34" from the floor - the same height as a typical table saw.

The way to determine the correct bench height is to measure from the floor to the j oint

Jointing with carbide. Our jointer has a carbide-insert cutterhead, and it had no problems dealing with the glue in the LVL. I was more worried about the planer, which has highspeed steel knives.

Planing is no problem. We were surprised by how well the planer's knives fared after dressing all the laminations for this project. After dozens of passes through the machine, the knives didn't look any worse for the wear.

Looking for bumps and hollows. When dealing with an 8'-long edge, it can be difficult to find the source of the problem with an edge. We balanced a straightedge at several places along the edge, then pinched the ends of the straightedge. If the straightedge rotated easily, there was a hump under it. If the corners dragged and there was light under the straightedge, we had a hollow on that edge.

Dominos will do 'ya. You can use almost any method to align the two edges you are gluing up for the top: biscuits, splines or even dowels. We have a Festool Domino in the shop, and it's perfect for this sort of accurate work.

36 ■ Popular Woodworking November 2009