The Last Minute Bench
Happy Boxing Day dear woodworkers. Have you given your saw its Christmas Box?
I havent either, though I did wrap up the bench I made for my Dad for Christmas.
In the coming weeks Ill share more of the build and Im working on a video showing my method for reinforcing the bench seat. In the mean time, heres a brief photo essay of the bench build.
Dont forget, now that Christmas is over, theres still time to share the gifts you made as part of the +Modern Woodworkers Association Last Minute Elf contest. You can read all about it here. Just send an email to iggy@tomsworkbench.com and youll be entered.
I hope you enjoyed your Christmas build as much as I did.
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| In order to flatten the bench seat, I hot glued it to a piece of melamine and ran it trough the planer. |
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| Here is the bench leg, also hot glued to a piece of melamine, midway through being flattened. |
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| In order to get two parallel ends, I eyeballed a chalk line roughly centered down the middle, then cut the ends perpendicular to the chalk line. |
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| Dovetailing is a messy thing. |
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| Dry fitting the let and seat. |
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| Filling the large knot in the leg with epoxy. |
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| Cutting the leg to length. |
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| Routing the slots in the bottom of the seat to receive the reinforcement. |
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| Ready for reinforcement. |
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| Trimming the two walnut legs to exactly the same length by gang cutting them. |
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| Transferring the seat location onto the walnut legs with the dovetailed leg. |
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| Dry fitting the walnut legs and arm prior to joinery. |
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| Routing the walnut leg joint. |
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| The finished joint, cleaned up with a chisel. |
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| Fitting the first walnut leg. |
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| Cutting miters on one of the walnut legs. |
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| The threaded rod reinforcement is epoxied in with Gorilla Glue epoxy. |
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| After sanding off the excess epoxy. |
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| Cutting the angles on the leg stretcher. |
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| A scrap is clamped to the bottom of the bench seat for use as a domino fence. |
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| The walnut leg miter joints are dominoed. |
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| Determining the walnut leg to bench seat fastener size. |
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| Dying the epoxy. |
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| Black dyed epoxy makes for pretty knots. |
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| The bench during clamp up. |
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| The assembled bench. |
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| Plugging the screw holes. |
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| The dovetailed leg joint, prior to shaping. |
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| The dovetailed leg joint after initial shaping. |
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| The completed dovetailed leg joint. |
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| I finished the bottom with four coats of lacquer first. |
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| The top received six coats of lacquer. |
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| The finished bench. |
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| The finished dovetailed leg to seat joint. |
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| The finished walnut leg to arm joint. |
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The Last Minute Bench
