Bench Hooks

I can't count the number of times I've tried to cut some small piece of stock with a handsaw only to chase it all over the bench because I hadn't taken the time to build a simple bench hook.  This weekend I decided to finally break down and build a pair of them.  I think a pair will be handy when working on long stock.  I can spread them apart and support the longer pieces.

'50s vintage plywood and a strip of hard maple

I saved all of the old plywood doors from my kitchen cabinets.  This is not that crappy, made in China, home center plywood.  No, this is 1958 cabinet grade birch veneer plywood.  Nice and flat with no internal voids.  The inner cores appear to be some type of fir.  Nice and flat!

I scraped and sanded the varnish off of both sides of the door and cut it to 12 x 18 inches.  I came up with a narrow strip of hard maple for the fence.  I decided that I would like to have a fence that was tall enough to double as a mitre box so I would need to laminate two pieces.

Gluing up the fence.

Gluing the fence to the base.

I glued the fence and the bottom cleat to the plywood base.  Then decided how wide I wanted my two bench hooks to be.  I settled on 10 and 8 inches wide.  The narrower of the two has a short fence for square cuts.  I made the other a little wider for cutting mitres.

Knife lines for the mitre slots.

I marked out the 45 degree lines for the mitre slots but decided I should do something more to attach the fence than just glue before I cut it into three pieces.  Rather than using screws, I'll use dowels to reinforce the fence attachment.  Now I need to build something to make dowels!  I'll post about that tomorrow.