I am building the essential workbench from the plans I purchased.  During my assembly the dowels that were to be drilled slightly off center to pull the legs into the foot did not work well due to alignment issues.  The dowels broke when I tried to insert them.  I then noticed that in the photograph of the completed bench that one of the feet did not have dowels inserted.  Why?  did the builder/auther have the same problem? 

Where can I find any discussions from others who are building or have built this bench?

A second question involves the angle for wedging the legs and strechers of 5 degrees.  When I scaled the plan (cad full size and to scale drawing}  The included angle was 10 degrees, 5 degrees on each side of center.  What is the included angle suposed to be?  Did the CAD draftsman error?  The details regarding how to use the wedges are not as clear as they could be so if you have some advice or tricks please let me know.  Also I in your construction articles why not put in lessons learned.  I am sure no matter how tallented your crafsman are there are times when they made an error and corrected it.

Al