I was asked to create a small bench (seat) for an entryway. The house is a split-level and needed something by the front door, but it couldn’t be too large else it would take up valuable space. So, that is where custom furniture comes in.
The Finished Product
The Plan
A few things you wont’ see on the plan are the shaped seat and the joinery method will be loose tenons (without a domino unfortunately). Also note how the lower stretchers are not aligned on the front and side and the angles are 3.5 degrees. You may be wondering why 3.5 degrees, why not 5 or something more substantial. Well it comes back to the fact that it needs to stay compact in size. So one thing you will note is that the base is the same size as the seat. 3.5 degrees over 18″ was about perfect to accommodate that. (Geometry and stuff). The entire bench is made from solid oak.
YouTube Video
Below is the build video for this bench.
The Materials and Milling
As with all projects, it starts with a plan and then onto laying out the pieces on rough lumber. I was able to get the entire bench from one board and then about 2 feet from the other board. The oak is 8/4.
Then I moved onto rough cuts, milling, re-sawing, milling again.
The seat and legs are the only pieces that remain 8/4, but the rest of the pieces are resawn. Stretchers are 1″ and the slats are 1/2″
Legs
The first item I turned my attention to is actually gluing up the seat from two pieces of oak. I set that aside for the time being and moved onto the legs.
The angled cuts on the legs are super easy to screw up. A 3.5 degree angle has to be cut on the bottom and top and they must match. Note, I only milled 4 leg pieces (no pressure). I started out by laying out the angles in an exaggerated way. Doing this gave me visual cues of how I should be cutting the legs. I used my table saw to cut the angles with the blade beveled to 3.5 and the miter gage at 3.5 degrees. One cut will do both.
Stretchers and Mortises
Once the legs were cut I moved onto the stretchers. I also took my saw blade back to perpendicular, but left the miter gage setting. Since I will use the miter gage to cut the matching angles on the stretchers. I started by cutting the top stretchers to sized based on my plan and clamped them in place between the legs. I knew how far off the ground I wanted my lower stretchers, but needed to get the exact length.
So I cut one end at 3.5 and took it over to my assembly and laid it in place. I marked exactly how long I needed it and took it back over to the saw. I adjusted my stop on the miter gage to cut the first one and repeated the cut for the other stretcher. Once the stretchers were cut to size I laid out the mortise locations on a few stretchers and transferred them to the the legs.
Cutting Mortises
Using my mortising jig and a router, I cut the mortises in the legs first. I always have a couple extra 1/4″ router bits on hand due to them breaking occasionally. I feel like I overtighten the collet sometimes and this is the result or maybe its just hard oak.
I used my last spare bit, so I placed an order for 3 more and moved onto cutting mortises in the stretchers. The setup is a bit more complex here. I have my stop block at 3.5 degrees and I have leg piece providing extra support for the router. During this, I realized my router is rotated 90 degrees from where it should be. I have no idea how long I have been using my jig the wrong way.
Glue Up
After some sanding, chamfering, adding the slots for table top fasteners, and cutting clamp blocks, I was able to glue the base up. I decided to try to use epoxy with filler for the glue up due to its longer open time and gap filling properties (I had some mortises that were a bit looser than I liked). I taped my clamp blocks onto the legs and mixed up some epoxy.
During the glue up, I made a pretty big mess with the epoxy. It got on my hands, on my work bench, and all over the joint areas. This lead to substantial time cleaning up those areas after the epoxy dried. In the future, I will mask off the glue joint areas and be more careful. In the background in this picture you can see the color station where I was trying out different variations to try and match what the client wanted. Always seems like a daunting task.
Shaping the Bench Seat
As the base was drying I turned my attention the seat. I roughly flattened on side with a hand plane and send it through the planer. Then flipped it and sent it through again to clean up the first surface. I jointed one edge and cut to width. Then I could lay out the shape of the ‘scoop’. I figured this would just fit in my bandsaw, so I could cut it all at once.
Cutting the seat was slow and steady, but worked well. Then I used a belt sander, card scraper, and R/O sander to get it all smooth. I also added a 3/8″ round over to the edges.
Slats and Support
At some point in time I cut a small strip to support the shelf slats and I actually drilled the mounting holes in the stretchers before the glue up. I also cut the shelf slats to width. After the base came out of the clamps, I could cut them to length. These were sanded as well.
Seat Meets Base
After removing the clamps from the base and doing a lot of cleanup with a chisel, card scraper, and sandpaper, I could finally get the top and base fit. First I had to add the 3.5 bevel to the top of the top stretchers. I should have done this before when they were just piece parts, but oh well. Out comes the hand plane again. Due to the material I removed from the seat, it developed a nice hump that I also had to flatten so the seat would sit flat on the base. After some back and forth for an hour, I had them fitted to each other.
I had to add some dowels that ran between the base and the seat. So I used a self-centering doweling jig and 3.5 degree scraps to drill vertical holes in the stretchers. Then I used dowel centers to transfer those locations to the seat bottom. The dowels in conjunction with 6 table top fasteners will hold it firmly in place.
Finishing – Step 1 – Dye Base
After a number of sample colors and lots of sanding, it was time to get some color on this bench. In order to get a darker base color, I dyed the wood first. Historically, I have used water and Mission Brown Trans tint dye, but this time I tried DNA and Trans tint. I have read that it will not raise the grain like water, of course. I actually using DNA (denatured alcohol) for my sample boards and it was working well. So I moved onto the base.
This is where the wheels fell off. The DNA was drying so fast, I was leaving horrible lap marks everywhere. Some areas would be really dark or really light. It was a mess. Since my samples were small and flat I didn’t experiences this same issue. So, I used DNA soak towels to remove a lot of the color from the base, which worked okay, but you could still make out the lap marks. I mixed up some water and dye and forged ahead. The base was still a bit inconsistent, but a lot better.
Finishing – Step 2 – Stain
After letting the dye dry overnight, I returned the next day to apply oil based stain. I think I used a “dark walnut” color from varathane. I applied a generous coat, let dry, wiped off excess, and repeated a bit later. The pieces were really coming to life now.
Finishing – Step 3 – Polyurethane
After allowing the stain to dry for 3 or 4 days (with occasional wiping between), I could move onto a protective top coat. I have been using a satin water based poly from Varathane for a while now and have been pretty pleased with it. So, loaded up the sprayer and got after it.
I laid down 4 coats in total. After the first coat, I did an extremely light sanding followed by vacuum and water wipe. After the second coat I could sand a tiny bit more aggressively, followed by the same vac and wipe down. Of course, no sanding after the fourth coat.
Assembly and Finished Pictures
After the fourth coat went on, I let it dry overnight. Then the next morning, I came out to assemble it and apply a little wax to the seat. The assembly process was a bit cumbersome for the slats, since I was driving screws from the bottom up into the slats. Kind of backwards, but I didn’t want the screws visible. I hope it holds up over time. I also stuck on some felt pads to the bottom of each leg.
Using the dowels for alignment, I attached the bench seat and flipped it upside down. Then I could install the table top fasteners (6 of them) by drilling pilot holes and driving a screw. The I flipped it upright and applied a coat of wax to the top. Voila!
The project took about 32 hours in total, and I think a chunk of that was due to a few extra hours cleaning epoxy and fitting the bench to the base that I could proactively avoid next time. If I build something like this again, I took a bit too much off of the seat and should come up with a different way to attach the slats or hide the screws.