154VIDEO Sitting Bench Plans Tour

In this video I want to introduce you to the sitting bench that I have at the

entrance to my house. That's what you see here. I made this out of rough pine

locally cut, very high quality, air-dried. It's just been a great bench. I should

mention, this project is well above the level of a beginner, but I

present it to you now because it's such a nice design. It's reminiscent of

the footstool that you built, and it's not so difficult that you can't aspire

to something like this in time. So I'm going to show you some of the features

and we're going to talk in a bit of detail about those when we look at the

plans together. So this is called a trestle bench because that's what they

call things that are shaped like this. So it's got an upright here, an upright

here, a cross piece that is connected to the uprights with this tenon. So this

this end you see sticking out here, it's not just pasted on there, it's actually

an extension of this piece. And it really is held together with these tapered

pegs. They're actually doing the job. In fact, there's no glue here on this part

of the project at all. It's just held together with these wedges. It's been

perfectly solid for I don't know how long, 20 years or so, more maybe, since I

made it. The bottom is cut out here in a decorative way and there's a

certain technique I described in the course here called pattern routing. I

have a little video there. It's a very powerful technique. I've put a carving

here in the top too, which I'll talk a bit more about in a minute. So here are

the plans for the sitting bench, the trestle bench. And I guess the first

thing I want you to look at would be the thickness of the wood. Now this wood is

1 7 8 inches thick, which is substantially thicker than standard lumber of approximately this size. Now you can make this bench from standard

1 1⁄2 inch thick lumber. It's going to work fine, but aesthetically I think

the thicker wood looks nicer. I got 1 7 8 inch wood because I had a

white pine log sawn to a 2 inch thickness. And because it was sawn well

and I was careful, I used my bench top thickness planer to take off just the

minimum amount so that the wood would be smooth. So that's how I got to 1 7 8

Down here we've got some dados. You remember those from earlier in the

course. Those are a three-sided groove. In this case, it fits nicely on top of the

upright here. It nestles in together. Another interesting feature, pretty to look at, but also functional, is this whole dowel arrangement. In practice what

I did was fasten the top to the uprights with some glue. And then when that was

all dried, then I bored some holes for these dowels. That's 1 inch diameter

maple dowel. You can't buy dowel pins that large in diameter, so I just

cut that from a length of dowel rod. But unlike smaller diameter dowel rods, when

you get into the big sizes, they are a little more accurate. In this case

I got genuine hard maple dowel cut to length. And then there's a slot here too

A little slot I cut with a handsaw. And the purpose of the slot is so that it

can accept a wedge. So when the dowel is in place, the hole is bored through here

and there would also be a hole. That same hole would extend down into the top of

the upright. The seat dowel is installed, tapped home, sticking up a little bit

above the top of the bench. And then a wedge is driven in with some glue, also

sticking up a little bit above the top of the bench. And then sanded flush as

part of the finishing process. So that's a nice strong kind of retro looking way

of fastening the top and the uprights. And it works fabulously well. Down here

take a look at the trestle itself. That's the cross piece. To keep things simple, I

only cut a little shoulder here in the top and one on the bottom, so that when

the trestle goes into position, these shoulders rest on the inside face of the

uprights. Mortises, or sorry, tenons, which is what this sort of stick out thing is

usually called, a tenon. Tenons usually have shoulders on all four sides

But I didn't think that was necessary here. Just added complication. It would

have reduced the thickness of the tenon here as well, unnecessarily I felt. So I

just left it full thickness. And notice here how the holes are kind of

D-shaped. These holes here, that's what you're seeing down here. And they're D-shaped to match the shape of the wedge. So the wedge is narrower at

this end than this end, but it's also semi-circular in shape on the outside

face and flat on the back. And that makes for a very strong connection. One wedge

would be tapped in from one direction, so small end here going in the hole

there. The lower wedge would be just the opposite. The small end would be coming

out here. And tapped into place. Shortly after you build this, you might want to

check those wedges. Make sure they haven't loosened up. If the wood has shrunk, they might loosen up. You can easily just give them a little tap with

a hammer and tighten them up again. Up here, this is pretty important. This grid

diagram will allow you to duplicate the shape of the bottom of the uprights onto

a piece of wood. So this shape here, what I'm tracing out right now, that is this

shape here. So it's a half pattern. You need to flip it over to do the other

half. And the grid diagram works by allowing you to draw the grid. Make it

easy to draw the grid onto a piece of say plywood, quarter-inch plywood, maybe

some stuff left over from when you made the boomerang. And you draw the grid and

then you note where the perimeter of the desired outline touches the grid lines

You make points there with a pencil and then you connect the dots all together

and you get a nice smooth curve. Cut out that curve with a jigsaw or a coping saw

scroll saw, a nice little quiet stationary scroll saw is very nice to use. And then

you've got the pattern you need to reproduce this nice shape here on the

bottom of the uprights. Have you ever thought about doing carving? The design

you see here is much easier to make than it looks. It takes three different shapes

of carving chisels. Carving is definitely not a beginner's activity but I want to alert you to how much beauty something like this can add to a project

And as I said, not difficult. I drew all of the details of this pattern with a

compass. The compass makes all the lines you see here and then and then they're

carved out using some carving gouges for the most part. Not enough room to

talk about this just yet but I just want to alert you to it. Something to aspire

to and perhaps in future courses maybe an intermediate or advanced woodworking course I can teach you all about how to make carvings like this. Now

this project, it could live outside forever exposed to the weather. It would

get pretty weathered and cracked and gray looking in time. My bench is inside

my entranceway, my mudroom, so it's not a heated area but it is protected from sun

and rain so the bench has lasted very well. I did apply an outdoor grade

finish to it mostly because of the color. You know I go into the details in the

the write-up in the course but the colors of this particular outdoor finish

are fabulous. They have a real kind of antique retro feeling to them but you

can really finish this any way you like. I mean milk paint would be really nice

Milk paint with a distressed finish so you can simulate wear around the corners

and things. That would do a fabulous job. But anyway if you tackle this project be

sure to let me know. I'd love to see how you how you do and how things work out

and never hesitate to contact me. In this case maybe you really want to make the

bench but you don't feel confident about doing the whole wedge thing maybe or

maybe the dados are giving you some pause and you'd like a way around those

so we can talk about that. Just connect and we'll get you going and try to help

you make the greatest possible sitting bench you can