Rustic Dining Room Suit -- Benches |
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We begin the benches by gluing up a whole mess of leg blanks. Because it's curved, each bench requires 5 legs. We also glue up a blank from which we will cut the bench seat. |
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While the glue dries, we mill the rails that will become the under carriage of the bench. |
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To create the bench top, we attach a swing arm made of scrap lumber to the seat blank and use a giant circle cutting jig on the band saw to cut the arched sides.
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Once that's done, we smooth both surfaces of the seat with a heavy duty random orbit sander. Because we carefully planed the boards that went into the seat blank to exactly the same thickness there is little work to do here; just fairing out the little ridges that occur when one board twists a little. After sanding both faces and all edges smooth, we use a hand-held router to round over the edges. The top edges get a generous radius to make them more comfortable.
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Next comes the tricky part; turning the legs. Turning one leg is simple, two that look alike is trickier. But 10 of them that match... that's tricky. Manufacturers use an automated duplicator lathe that can turn out pieces by the thousand, all just alike. But that takes all the artistry out of it. We do it by hand using a lay-out pattern, calipers and patience. And a little skill.
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Once the legs are turned, and bored for the dowel joints, we dry fit all the parts and check it all out. Then we knock it apart and do it again with glue and a few screws. A band clamp keeps the joints tight while the glue sets up. Finally we'll add corner blocks and attach the seat so that it floats just like we did on the chairs. |
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Done! |
