John Thomas wrote:

Nails are bad for plane irons, too. DAMHIKT. The stuff on my benchtop
was really just gunge -- ours is an old (ca 1941) farmhouse; the bench
was left from the original owner, and had who knows how many years of
paint, oil, dust, etc, etc; I would be concerned about the embedded
metal.

The bench is right next to my DP, and there's probably lots of swarf on that
side. The other side is my metalworking station, and there are lots of
little needle sharp bits of copper and stuff.

OTOH, maybe this isn't as hopeless as it sounded a couple days ago. All I
need to do is procure some real wood and make a new top. The support
structure is fine, and it's already there. No use reinventing the wheel,
since it's not like putting a hardwood top on a softwood frame is going to
cause a galvanic reaction and make the wood start to decay.

About the 'workbench clone' -- don't know where you live, but Harbor
Freight had one on sale for about $12 a few weeks back (I'm in Portland,
OR). For that price I couldn't resist. Seems like a good enough thing,
but haven't really had a chance to use it. -- Just another option to
think about.

I live in BFE as far as HF and Grizzly are concerned. Nowhere near a store.
I could maybe do mail order though, if the price + shipping is practical
relative to picking one up at Big Lots.

I haven't looked at one of those in a long time, but I have a vague idea
that that is probably the most practical short term way for me to have
something suitable for holding a board for planing.

Welcome to the slippery slope ....

Indeed. I'm already thinking about my next plane, and I don't even have the
iron for _this_ one sharpened yet.

I brought home a bunch of red oak 4x4 about 3.5' long to practice on. I
don't have a bandsaw yet, so I'll have to resaw on my table saw, which will
probably be rather ugly. Cleaning that up and making some boards ought to
be a good introduction. Maybe I can get enough boards out of these to do a
complicated glue-up for a new workbench top, though that's probably an
overly ambitious and time-consuming project considering that the bottom
just dropped out of the weather, and I don't have much longer to use my
shop until next spring.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
Confirmed post number: 17901 Approximate word count: 537030
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/