I had a designer reach out and was looking for a small bench to go near a front door. Something that could be used for taking off shoes or boots. After a little back and forth on the material, we settled on a nice little oak bench.

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Plan and Materials

The bench design is pretty simple. A slight splay front to rear for stability. Since there aren’t any lower stretchers, the bench needs to have some extra mortise space at top for strength. Add in some curves to not make the bench look too top heavy and away we go. In hindsight, I should have had a bit larger angle on the splay. The 5 degrees is barely noticeable.

The material was solid oak that all started as 8/4.

Mortises and Curves

Since I wanted a lot of mortise strength, I ended up using 4X 8mm dominoes at each joint. I almost went with one large loose tenon in each joint, but figured the domino was faster. I don’t have any good pictures, but to get the correct offsets, I used playing cards as shims and moved very slowly to ensure I was cutting the mortise in the correct spot.

Since this oak bench needed some curves, I initially created some templates out of 1/4″ plywood. I made them each a little over half the length of the stretcher. So, I could flip it over and have the straight section overlap the previous routed section.

After rough cutting with the bandsaw, I used double sided carpet tape to hold the template down. Then I used a flush trim bit in my router table to follow the template. I had to clean it up with spindle sander and hand sanding.

Base Glue Up and Top

I sanded all the oak parts and cut in some small slots for table top fasteners. The z-clip style fasteners will hold the bench top to the base as well as a dowel on each end.

The table top started out as some 8/4 material that was resawn to 4/4, but that didn’t look good. So, pulled out some more 8/4 material and glued up a seat bench.

Staining and Poly

I created about 8 different stain samples to match the clients oak floors using a combination of Transtint/Water and the stain color that was on the oak floors. After I was happy with the color, I applied two coats of transtint/water, then applied a coat of stain.

I typically spray water based poly, but for this project I decided to return back to a wiping oil poly (ArmRSeal by General Finishes). I applied 4 coats over 5 days with a very light sand in between coats. The 4th coat was very thin and got a quick rub with 0000 steel wool.

Crate and Finished Pictures

This bench is getting shipped out to Oregon, so I built a small crate to safely house it for the trip. Some 1/2 and 3/4″material and some 1/2″ rigid foam lining the inside.