Basic Split Top Roubo Workbench Build

Today we’re building a split top Roubo workbench from one of my workbench kits for my editor, Brad. 

Here is the material we’re going to use for the bench. I have a pair of bench tops as well as some base material. 

First, I’m going to take the workbench tops over to the surfacer, and get them flat and leveled out. This is a six inch diameter cutter, spun by a five horsepower motor, and it’s basically a big router sled. It makes for really fast work to get these down to final thickness. These will be quite a bit thicker than your standard laminated bench top, which is normally three and a half inches thick. 

Now I’m going to make these square, which is easier to do here at the saw, it just means I’ll have to do a little bit of cleanup work to remove the saw marks later. This will also take these things down to final width. 

I’m going to do some epoxy work now. The first step is some penetrating epoxy, which stabilizes the mushy areas and ensures that we won’t have any bleed out of any color from the inclusions to the surrounding wood. That can especially be a problem on maple, because it is so light and blonde that it has a tendency to bleed fairly easily. It gives a much nicer, crisper, and cleaner look to the epoxy fills. 

After the penetrating epoxy has cured, I am going to do the epoxy to fill in all of the defects and voids. To do that, I’m using TotalBoat’s High Performance. This is available in three different hardeners: a fast, a slow, and a medium hardener. I’m using the fast one today, because there are things to fill on every single face. So the faster I can get through this, the better for the whole production. For the pigment, I’m going to use a little bit of black. There are some really cool bug holes down here, which have almost a burnt look to them. The black pigment will make for more of a smoky tint to maintain the look of that. 

I’m going to get started on the base now. I have these two sticks here, which are going to become the legs. Brad wants a bench a little taller than mine, but he’s going to add some leveling feet to the bottom of the legs once he has it back in his shop, and that’s going to add about an inch and a half. So we are going to make the bench the same height as mine, which is 33 inches tall. The final height of a bench depends on a lot of personal factors, including the type of work you do as well as the height of the user. 

To figure out the height of the legs, I’m subtracting the thickness of the top from our desired height, and that’s the final length of the legs. In the case of this bench, I’m cutting these roughly down to 32 inches, which allows for a little bit of extra length to get to the final length later on when I do the final cuts, which will have the legs at 28 and a half inches. 

Next I need the material for the six rails of the bench. There are two upper rails, two lower rails, and two longer front and back rails which set the overall width of the bench and the length of the base. The size of the base also determines your overhangs. Again, the type of work you do, your vices, etc is going to tell you how much overhang you need. For Brad’s bench, the overhangs are going to be symmetrical. 

Here is the stock for the rails, so I’m going to lay these out as well. 

So I’ll get these all squared up and down to final dimension. 

I’m going to start the joinery with the legs first, starting with the mortises and the holes for the barrel nuts. 

Just have to do a little bit of cleanup work around the base of the tenon to get everything flushed up and ready to go. I made round ended mortises, so I’m also going to round over the tenons. 

After some fine tuning on the fit, it went in! I’ll get the other ones in and then we have our base. 

And here it is, all joined together! I have to do the stub tenons on the top of the legs to receive the top, and I am going to drill the holes to peg all the short rails in place. 

I’m working towards final assembly, and I’ll be draw boring the legs and rails together. This process gives me some advantages: I can assemble it without any clamps, the joints will be as tight as I can possibly make them, and it’s going to pull the frame back into exactly the position it’s in when I transfer the holes from the legs to the rails. So I want to make sure this thing is perfect and ready to go. I’m making sure this is clamped together nice and square. The lower rail should be parallel to the floor on both sides. And making sure the top rail is flush to the top of the legs. 

Now that I’m happy with the final position, I’m marking the hold locations onto the tenons. Then I can drill the real holes for the draw bore. I will shift the hole location closer to the shoulder by about a 16th of an inch. That’s going to give that offset in the holes, so when that peg goes through there, it’s going to pull that tenon deeper into the mortis as that peg is trying to line up those holes. 

I am also setting up where the leg vice is going to go. It’s a lot easier to drill any holes and do work on the leg now while it’s separate from the rest of the bench, instead of when the whole bench is assembled. 

I have this dry assembled, just to make sure everything is ready to go. I finished prepped and sanded all of the inside surfaces. 

To assemble everything, I’m going to use these pegs that I made from some cherry wood. I made them using a dowel plate, which results in an ugly but strong dowel, because the grain fibers are following their way through the hole, meaning you have continuous top-to-bottom grain. I am going to be using a significant amount of force to send these dowels through the tenons, so the dowel plate is a good way to weed out the back ones as you’re working. 

Glue is technically not required on this joint, because all of the strength is coming from the dowels, but I figured… might as well. 

And then I will drive the dowels in. And that’s never coming apart ever again, and it pulled it right back into alignment. 

The last part of getting this base assembled is the knockdown hardware. Brad wants this to be knock-downable, so it can be moved easier. So I’m going to use a couple of these long bolts.

Here is the completed base, ready to receive the top. 

I flipped the top slabs upside down and laid my base on top of the slabs, which allows me to line up the slabs to the base and transfer the location of the stub tenons from the base onto the underside of the workbench. And while it’s upside down, I’ll also transfer the mounting locations for those bolts so those can get drilled and tapped as well. 

The last major work is to trim the bench down to final length now that the two tops are mounted to the base. 

This is looking pretty darn awesome. This is basically it for the basic bench. From here, I’m just going to do a little bit of touchup work. I’m going to break all of the corners and apply a little bit of finish. I’m going to apply one coat of Arm-R-Seal, just to give the bench a little bit of resilience to anything that might get spilled on the bench. 

So that is the basic Roubo! If you think of the Roubo workbench as more of a platform, this is the starting point, and you can add and modify things to your particular liking or working style. I’ve already made one modification with that split-top, but there are plenty of other modifications that can be made. Some common accessories are a gap stop, a shelf, a tool cabinet to go in the bottom, a sliding dead man, vices, etc. There’s quite a lot you can do with this thing. If you want to build your own, I do have a full set of plans available here on the website. The plans are based on the block sizes of all of the pieces, so if you want to glue up your own parts, you can do that. If you want to buy one of my kits, those are available on the website as well. 

That’s going to do it for this one. Thank you as always for joining. I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on the split top Roubo workbench or anything here in the shop, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. And until next time, happy woodworking!