Last year or the year before I made some benches to hold potted flowers and such and they worked very well for the purpose. Nothing fancy, just useful.
Here's one doing it's job last summer.
Well things change and the butterfly bushes are in the ground and I found the roses, still in pots, do better in a different place in the yard. I didn't need the benches anymore and I offered them to Samantha and David who will likely use them for similar purposes in their new yard. Much to my dismay the benches got attention from Samantha's father, which is high praise indeed coming from a craftsman, and also from a good friend of theirs. I came home with an 'order' for 2 benches to be delivered my next time visiting NC. As I've been noting my projects here I figured I'll put the 'bench project' up.
They're not fancy and I just use construction 2x4's to make them. First step, sand off the mill marks and such. They're not fancy but I don't want them looking tacky!
I split the 2x4's down the middle. I don't use 2x2's because it's hard to find a straight one and I also need one flat edge. As you know, the edges (corners) of a 2x4 or 2x2 are rounded a bit. This isn't Garry's incredible word-working barn but it worked pretty well. I purposely made the height of the new workbench the same height as the saw table just to hold long/large lumber pieces like this. So, it goes in this end...
... and it comes out this end. Notice the brilliant use of an old grill stand as a run-out table. I can turn it sideways when cutting large sheets of plywood. Doesn't look like much but it's sturdy, it works, and it was already on wheels :) This set up really worked well and I never had to hold up a piece of wood... just slid it through the saw.
All the lumber ripped down and ready to be finished and, as if by magic...
... it's all done. I used a different finish than I did last time and although this is quite pretty, it took 2 coats and was a bit hard to work with. We'll see if I use it again. It's a lot of finishing... 512 feet of surface to be covered... twice. By far this step requires the most time to both get the finish on and then drying time between and after coats. This ate up parts of 3 days. Did I mention it's incredibly boring as well ???
All the pieces cut to size and ready to assemble. You can probably tell it's enough for 4 benches. That long piece is leftover... about $1.87 worth :) I bought 8 2x4's and only needed 7 1/2. I'm rather sure I'll come up with some use for it, practical or not.
Voila!! Two the completed benches. One is 2" shorter than the other because that's what the requestor asked for so that's what she's getting.
That's it... the bench project! I really, really like doing this stuff and making these 4 benches had me working on them for 5 days, some days longer than others, and it was 5 great days of pleasure.
No comments:
Post a Comment