For cross-pieces cut from the pieces that remain two lengths of nineteen inches each; cut and trim as before.
Take one pair of legs (i. e. two of the thirty-inch strips), lay them on the floor on the two-inch side, just nineteen inches apart. At one end, between the legs, lay one of the nineteen-inch pieces also on the two-inch side, so it will be flush with the squared ends of the legs; hammer the legs on to the ends of the cross pieces with two or three twenty-penny nails. This job ought to be done very neatly and accurately, so that the shape will be exactly like [fig. 5]. If you are careless and let the legs spread while nailing, your Bench will be hopelessly rickety.
III.—MY SAWHORSE AND WORKBENCH. (Continued.)
TO give greater firmness to the bench there must be some brace made this way: Take the ten-foot inch board; square one end; measure twenty-three inches with try-square; cut off nicely with cross-cut saw. Now you have a board twenty-three inches long and twelve inches wide. Divide in middle at each end; connect the points with chalk line, then cut down this line with splitting saw.
You will have two pieces twenty-three inches long and six inches wide; these are the two end braces. Lay one of these pieces across the legs you have just joined, at the closed end. All the edges must be flush; if not, plane them and make them true. You will see that if you have measured and cut carefully they will come right, for the legs are each two inches thick, making four inches, and the cross-piece is nineteen inches, making twenty-three in all; just the length of your brace. Nail the brace firmly into both legs and cross-piece with six-penny nails. Do the same with the other set of legs.
Now in the space you have chosen for your bench, stand up both pairs of legs endwise to the wall, and six feet apart, leaving full two feet clear beyond, as your bench will be ten feet long when done.
Take the two big planks (the ten foot ones, two inches thick), measure two feet from each end of each plank: draw a line in direction a a. (See [fig. 6].) Then parallel to a a, draw another, b b, one inch farther toward the middle of the board; then another, c c, an inch beyond that, always measuring away from the ends. On these lines a a and b b mark the places for your screws in alternate spaces, thus—