roubo

OpenSCAD model of a 'roubo' style carpentry bench.

The 'roubo' bench is a style of woodworking bench constructed primarily from softwood and without metal fastenings, traditional in parts of east Asia. The internally threaded blocks for the two vices are clearly turned from close- grained hardwood; I suspect the moving block for the end vice, and the treenails and locking wedges, should also be hardwood.

All dimensions in this model are in millimetres.

If reasonable sizes for top planks include 150mm (which is what we have) then the maximum possible diameter of a vice screw is 25mm; which means we may as well use commercial metal threaded rod. A wooden screw that small would be finicky to make and pretty fragile.

if you can get 200x75mm for the top planks then a turned wooden screw may become more practical, but I have not parameterised the screw diameter

This file is partially constructed from analysis of this video.

Key points:

1. 1:55-3:08 leg top joint detail
2. 3:10-7:50 top plank end tenon detail
3. 7:50-9:20 cutting end vice slot (I don't think the cutting of the internal slot for the end vice moving block is ever shown)
4. 9:30-10:14 dowels to assemble top planks
5. 10:24-13:25 detail of end vice assembly
6. 10:24-13-09 top end cap assembly
7. 13:30-14:20 cutting end tenons of leg cross brace
8. 14:20-16:40; 19:30-20:00 front vice assembly
9. 16:42-17:08 assembling leg cross brace
10. 17:20-18:05 leg longitudinal brace
11. 18:20-18:55 assembling leg assembly to top assembly

This model is parameterised and is resizeable within limits, but if you vary any dimenstion by more than about 25% you're probably going to need to do some rework.

Colours are for clarity only.

Parameters

height=950, width=1500, nplanks=4, ndowels=4, plank_width=150, plank_gap=20, top_thickness=75, leg_section=100

The following parameters may be passed to the bench module:

Parameter	Default	Documentation	Sensible range
height	950	height of bench top	800-1100
width	1500	overall width of the bench, excluding the end vice winder	1200-2000
nplanks	4	number of planks comprising the top	2-5
ndowels	4	number of dowels joining each adjacent plank pair	2-8
plank_width	150	width of each plank	150-300
plank_gap	20	gap between each pair of planks	0-20
top_thickness	75	thickness of the planks comprising the top	60-100
leg_section	100	thickness of the (square section) legs	75-150

Errata/todo:

1. locking wedges and treenails are generally not present in this drawing;
2. mortices and holes for wedges and treenails are not all present;
3. two of the tapered mortices for the longitudinal braces are the wrong way round;
4. while all tenons are modelled, not all mortices are; where a tenon intersects an apparently solid piece, assume there is a mortice!
5. screw threads are not yet modelled.

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial/Share Alike