Garden Bench

The English Garden Bench uses some large chunks of wood in its construction, some as thick as 3 inches, dressed down.  It is designed to use timers like these: this is a 4" x 6" white oak beam salvaged from an old barn.  I just happened to have a couple of these on hand and will use them for parts of this project, most of it however will have to use laminated parts because timbers like this are very hard to find these days.

Because of the large amount of laminating work to be done in this project we bout a new toy.  This is a Performax wide drum sander.  Um, well, OK, no it's not.  It used to be a Performax, but Jet Tools bought out that company and is now producing this tool.  This piece of equipment will help out quite a lot around here, not just on this project but on anything that requires a lot of sanding, especially on wide panels.  Because of the open ended design, it can sand panels up to 32 inches wide -- sand one 16" side, flip it around and sand the other side.

We used to be able to get lumber flat enough for glue-ups with our surface planer, running in finish mode, but now that it's been in daily use for 7 years, it's beginning to wear out.  It still works well enough for thickness planing and smoothing out rough sawn lumber, but no longer produces a nice flat surface.  Before I sand each piece I scribble on it with a pencil.  After sanding the high spots are sanded off and the pencil lines are almost gone, where the pencil lines are still clear are the dips and hollows that must be sanded away in order to get a structurally sound glue joint.

I use a new generation polyurethane glue for laminating parts, it offers exceptional strength, quick "tack time" and is waterproof when cured -- a handy thing for outdoor furniture!  Three things make for a superior glue joint: using the right kind of glue, getting wood-to-wood contact through-out the joint, and having sufficient clamping.  For gluing wood, use glues made for wood.  Apply enough glue to make a good bond but not so much that it will come gooshing out all over everything, that just wastes your glue and makes a mess.

By sanding the mating faces perfectly flat we get good tight joints, and by using heavy duty clamps -- and using them properly -- we can apply even pressure across the full width of the board, using enough clamps to apply even pressure along the length of the part.  In a lamination that has little or no "stress" (i.e. bowed or twisted boards) the clamps can be removed after about two hours and used on another part.  Assemblies that include a belligerent board will need to stay clamped up overnight so the glue can reach it's full strength.

Nearly all of the parts for this bench will need to be laminated up from between 2 and four layers of lumber.  This is a lengthy process because I don't have a million clamps, or a room the size of an aircraft hanger to lay all the clamped up parts out in.  So, this process will continue as I begin the parts making process.

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