Garden Bench

If we are making a one-off piece, we'll do the lay-out of parts directly on the lumber using paper templates, if any templates are needed.  But if we want to add the piece being built to our catalog of standard offerings the next step for any new project is to make plywood templates.  In this case we are using a measured drawing (no full size patterns, just scale drawings with measurements) from The New Yankee Workshop and we expect this bench to become quite popular so we need a set of good lay-out templates to provide us with all the information needed to build this piece of furniture.

We use scrap pieces of 1/8" Baltic Birch Plywood (BBP) for most of our template/pattern making.  This is a good material for us to use because it's solid, hard, and smooth but easily worked.  And we tend to have a fair amount of it laying around since we use it for drawer bottoms in CD cabinets.

We use a variety of drawing instruments to very carefully lay out the pieces on the plywood -- double checking measurements constantly and cross checking the alignment of parts that will form assemblies.  For smaller arches and bends we use artists french curves, for long sweeping lines, we use a thin batten of wood positioned with small brads.  Then we cut out the templates.

Those parts that use straight lines and parallel edges can be cut and trimmed to exact size easily on the table saw.  All others are cut on a band saw with a fine blade, and are cut just a tad over-size.  Then we use a drum sander to bring the pieces down to the finished shape.

The template pieces are then sanded to 150 grit and given a light coat of lacquer to seal the wood.  Sealing the wood prevents the ink used in lay-out lines and writing descriptions on the patterns from creeping -- capillary action in the wood will draw the ink out from the lines making them fuzzy and difficult to read.

When the lacquer is completely dry the templates are scuff sanded to smooth them and we can begin adding lay-out lines for mortise locations, tenons, screw holes, etc, as well as labeling the parts and adding text describing the shaping of each part.  Once the ink has dried, we will add a couple more light coats of lacquer to prevent smearing of the ink.

It is helpful if we drill small holes in the template to allow us to use an awl to punch through the pattern onto the wood below to mark mortise corners and screw hole centers, and another larger hole to allow us to hang the template set on a nail along the top of the wall.

When we're all done we have a template set that contains all the information needed to build this bench; dimensions for each piece, locations and size of all joinery, and notes on edge treatments.  With this template set I no longer need a plan, everything I need is here.  Once a template set is done, we do not normally need to make templates again, these will be re-used over and over.  If changes are made to the design, then we must also re-make the affected templates.

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