[Workbench] Functional and done (for now)

The workbench I have been building for (I think) well over a year is finally "done". Except its not. It needs the lower shelf, sliding deadman, and possibly the planing stop to be created. I consider this a milestone of doneness because the vise is finally installed! It takes a lot of tweaking to get it to roll smoothly, and some of its alleged frictionless behavior might be impossible because of some early layout mistakes I made back when I was young. However, it does run extremely smoothly, and while it took a long time to dial in, it was well worth it.

The best part of the installation procedure was finally trimming the chop to bench height so that I could really use it. I am still not sure what the final shape will be, but I put a generous mitre on it to allow rasping etc access from below.

Here is how it looks now:

Some who are familiar with the Benchcrafted hardware will wonder where the roller bearing bracket is. It fits inside the chop, thusly:

Yes, I did that by hand, yes it was a pain, and the main reason was just because my bench is so low that it seemed to be really awkward-looking to cut the chop above the bracket. I am a little better with mortising now than I was before doing that. Almost 3 inches into some hard cherry. Good times.

Here it is all snugged up and flush with the top. Yep, it is ridiculously strong, could probably crush a coconut. Soon: build a lower shelf, sliding deadman, and then actually get to work using it!