Gluing Up The Legs

The nice thing about using leg components that are the same thickness as the the apron is that it’s a breeze to make the notches. Simply by gluing the inner an outer legs together it creates that nice big notch to receive the apron. Some examples of this bench have aprons that are simply mounted on the sides of the legs. The reason I didn’t do that and went for this design is that the early Nicholson version of the bench featured this detail as did “The Beast”. In theory the method I have shown creates a nice flush surface which could be useful on larger work. I wait with interest to to see if it was worth the effort.

I cleaned up the mating surfaces of the wood with the smoothing plane, just a very light pass to remove machine marks. The outer leg was then glued to the inner leg with PVA, a rub joint which was then lightly supported by clamps. Once dried the surfaces were quickly dressed. Next up is the mortice and tenon joinery needed to make the leg frames.