marc - today i wanna show you how to build a simple and sturdy outdoor bench, and then we're gonna kick it up with some, now the inspiration for this piece came from a bench that i saw outside of my wife's lady part's doctor. and, she's pregnant right now, so every two weeks we're goingin and out of the office. but i saw this bench sitting there
and, of course, i wanted to inspect it. maybe even take some measurements,but like a good husband, i escorted her up to the doctor's office. made sure she wascomfortable, rubbed her feet, all that stuff, and then i came back down and inspected the bench. now, i was inspired to build one, but i wanted to use thisas a lesson for design. i don't consider myselfa really great designer,
but i can share my processand maybe it'll help you out. for me it's a two stage process. number one, i design something that satisfies the corefunctionality i'm looking for. making sure it's strong enough, making sure the proportionslook pretty good, and that the joinery is designed to do what it's supposed to do. then, and only then, will istart to embellish the piece
and make it look a little bit more fancy, a little more customized, and maybe a little bit morelike my personal style. and that's the lesson we'regonna go through today. i'm gonna build a basicversion inspired by that one outside the doctor's office, and then we'll justsoup it up a little bit. we'll add some spoilers andfins and just see where it goes. alright, let's look at the wood.
now, the wood i'm goingwith is african mahogany. and the reason i chose that species is because it's workedwell for me in the past. now, you may not necessarilyeven find this wood on your, sort of, top five, top ten lists of outdoor friendly woods, butit does have rot resistance and, in my personal experience, i have a few chairsout of african mahogany that have done very well outside.
so, i'm hopeful that thiswill work well for the bench. now when it comes to outdoorwood, you got quite a spectrum. you have your really expensivestuff up at teak and epay, and then you have themore fairly priced stuff like cedar and cypress. right, so you've got a lot of choices. it doesn't really matter what you use. use something that'savailable, that you can afford, and you like the way it looks.
and, for me, this african mahogany was kind of middle-of-the-road price wise, and i've got experiencewith it that shows me that it holds up pretty well in the environment i'm gonna put it in. so, use whatever you want,this is what i'm gonna use. let's start cutting this stuff up. using the cut list, i strategizethe placement of my parts for the best grain, as wellas the best use of material.
each leg is made up of three pieces, so it's a good idea to get them all from the same piece of stock, giving us the best color and grain match. for longer pieces, likethe aprons and rails, it's important to use boardsthat are already nice and flat, otherwise they'll betoo thin after planing. if you have some wavy boards, use those for theshorter aprons and slats.
i break the parts down at the miter saw and then rough cuteverything at the band saw. i try to cut everythingextra wide at this stage. this is especially importanton the longer pieces since those have a betterchance of warping after the cut. now all the pieces are roughly cut to size and i'm gonna work on one part at a time. and, first, we're gonnastart with the legs. now the legs are about twoand quarter inches square,
or as close as we canget to that dimension, and to get to that extra thickness there, we're gonna use three piecesand glue them together. now in the ideal world, we'd have material that was thick enoughto this all in one shot, but this is all i got isthis four quarter stock, so three pieces should do the trick. so, i'm just gonna mill up both faces, and then we'll be ableto glue these together
and create our leg blanks. each leg piece is jointed on one face. the other face is thenplaned parallel to the first. don't worry about the edges just yet. arrange three piecesfor each leg so that the grain is aligned in a waythat makes visual sense. now i'll spread a generous amount of glue on each glue surface. i'm using titebond iii for it's
outdoor friendly characteristics. the boards are then sandwichedtogether and clamped. i'm using two stripes of mdf as cauls to help distribute the clamping pressure, but also to protect the mahogany. even though the pieces have rough edges, you still wanna makesure they aren't slipping too far past one anotheras the pressure is applied. by the way, if you're short on clamps,
you can easily glue up two legs at once to help speed things up. as you can see, i'm very fortunate to not be short on clamps. once the glue is dry, sandany of the excess squeeze out and head to the jointer. we can now mill ourlegs to final dimension as if they were one singlepiece of solid stock. while planing, you'llwanna send each piece
through twice at each setting, hitting two faces and keepingthe blank nice and square. if you wind up just a little bit less than two and quarter inches, don't worry. your legs will still work just fine. with a stop lock in place, i can cut all four legsto their final length. now let's do some joinery. now, i've got my legsall grouped together,
oriented the way i want them to go. and you can see my grain isconsistent through these pieces. and i've just labeled them front left, rear left,rear right, front right. and, i also placed a mark on the top here, just to remind me wherethose mortises are gonna go, 'cause that's gonna be the next step. so, let's take theseapart and we'll be able to lay out the mortises on one of our legs.
so here's one fully laidout and ready to go, and the reason i do this is because it really is a common sense check. i make sure that everything is located where it's supposed to be. the size of the mortise iswhat it's supposed to be and i compare this directly against my drawings on the sketchup file. once i have this done on one,i can be pretty confident
and use this for my set up,because on the rest of them, all i really need are two marks. you can see i've got themark on the end grain showing me which side mymortise will be located on. and i've got a square here, set up to three-eighths of an inch, so i need a line for that three-eighths. another one set for one and one-eighth. like this.
we'll do this on the otherside as well for this mark. and those are the only marks we need. those are start and stoppoints for the router, because the router setup isgonna do the rest of the work. all you need here is the router and the edge guide and the bit. and i've got a three-eighthscinch spiral bit. up cut is preferred, but you could use down cut if you needed to.
this is all we really needto make repeated mortises. let's get the setup going. i secure a small piece ofmdf to the bench as a stop and then bring two of my legblanks together, top to top. position them so the mortises on each leg are on the same side. the legs are then clampedsecurely to the bench and the mdf strip keeps things aligned. the router is then setup,
aligning the bit with the layout lines. and the depth is setusing the turret stop. my strategy for mortisingis pretty simple. i start by plunging the frontof the mortise at full depth. i then do the same thing at the back. now i can remove thematerial between the holes in two to three passes,going deeper each time. the reason for prerouting the start and stop points is two fold.
first, it allows me to accurately establish the start andstop points of the mortise. second, it gives me a clear zone, so that even when i can'tsee what the bit is doing, i can feel the end of the cutand stop before i go too far. using the same setup i can route the mortise on the second leg. two down, six to go. when repositioning the legs,
be careful to note theposition of the mortises and make sure you'll always referencing from the same side of the leg. in my case, i'm referencingfrom the inside surfaces. using dust collection, therouting is a little less messy, but it's still hard to see. the start and stop holeswill prove very helpful. when all the mortises are cut, bring the legs together again
just to double check the layout. now, the rest of thisproject stock needs to be milled down to three quarters of an inch and we'll just do everything at once. well, now that all of ourpieces are milled to size, we can do a little bit more mortising. the top, long pieces have quite a few mortises for all of those slats. we'll use the same methodology
we used before with therouter and the edge guide, only this time we're gonnause a quarter inch bit. the layout is done on both rail pieces while they're clamped together. consult the plans for the proper spacing. it's easy to get confused here, so make sure you clearlynote the mortise areas. the edge guide is then positioned, so that the bit is centeredon the thickness of the rail.
notice that i'm keepingthe rails clamped together as it helps stabilize the router. if you still have trouble with balance, add a third piece to the stack. now i know this is a lot of routing, but i think it's worth it. true mortise and tenonjoints are incredibly strong and they'll serve our benchwell throughout the years. all you need to make themortises is a router,
and edge guide, and some patience. when all the mortisesare done are one rail, flip the assembly aroundand do the other rail. well, that was a lot of mortises, but now we need to move on to the tenons and we'll use the table sawand a dado stack to cut those. i use a cutting gauge toscribe the shoulder lines. this helps with setting upthe saw on the next step while also helping us prevent tear out.
the aprons, the narrowslats, and the wide slats have slightly different tenons,so i lay out one of each. at the table saw, set up the dado stack for a three-quarter inch wide cut. use the layout lines to set theblade height conservatively, and use the cut shoulder lineto set up the fence position. now make the cuts and use a test piece if you have on available. the fit is a little bit snug,
so we'll raise the blade and cut again. and that's the fit we're going for. now we can cut our actual work pieces. now we can use the sameset up for the slats, only we'll have tochange the blade height. you might have noticedthat we have a bit of a square peg, round hole situation, so we'll round over thesides of all of our tenons. i use a chisel and a raspto get the job done quickly.
and that's what we're going for. now, if some of your tenons are too tight, use a shoulder plane to peel some material off the tenon cheek andsneak up on that fit. well that sure is a lotof rounding over of tenon, so you might be wondering is this the most efficient way to get the job done. well, like anything in wood working, there are multiple waysto get the job done.
for instance, with those mortises, if i used a hollow chisel mortiser, i would have had squaremortises to begin with and it would have beenunnecessary to do this. you can certainly square the mortises yourself with a chisel if you wanted to, but i find that to be more labor intensive than just doing this rounding over. now, with this many tenons,
it probably would've been more efficient to come up with another option. something like the festool domino. you can even substitute pocketscrews for all of these. dowels would've worked just fine. in some cases, biscuitswould've been okay, but they're a little bit shallow and i think we need a littlemore strength with this. so, long tenons areprobably your best bet.
okay, so there's a lot of different ways. before you even ask the question, "why didn't you use x, y, or z?" the reason is because ilike to show you methods that involve a limited set of tools, even if they mean a little bit more work. and this way, everyone can do it. and if you're got an easier method, then by all means, do it.
so, now with all themortises and tenons cut, we can do an assembly and get a look at what thebench actually looks like. alright, well what we havehere is what i'm considering the basic version of the bench. everything's still fairly square, but in and of itself,the design is quite nice. i mean, i think i'd be happywith this as it is right now, but we can do a few more things that will
beautify it, at least in my opinion, and make it look alittle bit more elegant. now, you may disagree with me, this is where it venturesoff into a matter of taste. so, you can do whatever youwant with your own bench. i'm gonna add a few details tothe top, as well as the legs, that i think will really refine this piece and make it look just that much better. first, i'm gonna cut aslight curve into the slats.
i made a template fromscrap that's about an eighth of an inch in at the center point and stops just a bit shortof the tenon shoulder. with the curve drawn on each slat, we can make the cuts at the band saw. if you have an oscillating spindle sander, you can make quick work ofcleaning up the curved face. if not, you can use aflexible sanding strip and scrapers to do the cleanup.
and here's a cool trick, if you line up all of thecut slats between the rails and press them together with clamps, you can sand all of them at once making sure the curves match up perfectly. while we're working on the slats, i'll take a moment to use mysmoother to clean up the edges. the smoother is muchfaster and leaves edges that are nice and clean and square,
whereas a sander wouldtend to round them over. now let's work on those legs. i'm gonna add a six inchtaper to the two inside faces. the taper will remove a quarter inch of material at the bottom of the leg. i'll use a shop-made taperingjig to make the cuts. the jig is just a piece of ply with a three-quarter inchrunner for the miter slot. the leg is then held inplace with clamps and stops,
allowing me to pass it throughthe blade at a slight angle. make sure you plan the order of cuts so that the first taper faces up when doing the second taper cut. the tapers lighten the look of the legs and give them just alittle bit more elegance. with the tapers cut, i'll adda slight crown to the legs. i made a little template that i can use for reference on the end grain.
as you can see, we're adding this crown to the two outside faces only. i'll use the same templateon the bottom of the legs, making sure it's flushwith the outside faces. because of the tapers,the template will overhang the inside faces here at the bottom. to do the shaping, i'll use my jack plane. i'll keep an eye on the end grain marks as i remove the materialon the face of the leg.
once i'm down to thepencil line on one side, i can move on to the other side. a flexible sanding strip canbe quite useful once again as the legs are smoothed to perfection. a final hand sanding breaks all the edges and preps the leg for finish. and speaking of finish prep, now's a good time to run all of our slats and aprons over the router table
to put an eighth inchround over on the edges. remember to only put a round over on the bottom edge of the apron pieces and the outside edges of the seat rails. for the slats, you can put the work piece on it's side to do the routing. well, now it's time to do the assembly and i'm gonna use titebound iii because it is the ultimate wood glue,
rated number one by pros. actually, it is a real good glue for outdoors stuff like this and it gives me a little bit more working time which is essential,especially here in arizona. things dry very quickly and ineed as much time as possible. especially for that top, andthat's where we're gonna start. we're gonna put all thoselittle slats into the mortises and try to get that thing gluedup before it starts to dry.
i'm putting glue in all the mortises, but the only tenons that get glue are the outside wide slats. normally, i'd put glue on all the tenons, but in this case, i'mworking against the clock and if i get lots of squeeze out, it could be a major cleanup issue. this part can be a little tricky, so i get the first tenon started
and then hold it in place with a clamp. i can then get theremaining tenons aligned with their mortises andtap them into place. once the tenons are aligned, i'll use clamps to pulleverything together. the legs and aprons area little bit easier. i'll do side sub assemblies first. a little clamping pressureshould do the trick, and notice how i taped on some scrap
to help protect the face of the leg. now, before i glue thelong apron in place, i wanna attach a few cleats. now the sketchup drawingshows one long cleat, but there's no reason why we can't break it up into smaller pieces. i just don't happen to haveany material that long anymore. so, i'm gonna attachit with glue and screws to the inside face of the apron.
and then i'm going to predrill for screws, so that we have a means toattach the top to the bench. i'll drill two holes forattaching to the apron and three for attaching to the top. with some glue on thecleat, i use clamps to align it with the top edge of the apron. make sure you're counter sunk holes are facing the right way. a couple of one and an eighth inch
stainless screws will do the trick. all six of my cleats areattached in the same manner. now, i can attach the apronsto the side sub assemblies. by the way, i don't oftenhave many guests in the shop, but when i do, i put their butts to work. say, "hi" to rich. i gave all the parts anover night cure period and started the next daywith a finish sanding. everything is sanded to 220 grit.
and the bottom of the legs are chamfered to help prevent future tear out. well, now we get to do everybody's favorite part of wood working, finishing. for an outdoor project, youreally do need to think about a strategic approach for your finish, depending on the climate you live in and the sort of exposure it's gonna have. you can cater the finish to your needs,
as well as how much workyou wanna do in the future. because no finish reallylasts forever outside. but there are some finishes that're a little more bulletproof than others and we're gonna do oneof those here today. taking some inspirationfrom the boating world. the first product we'regonna use is call cpes. that's clear penetrating epoxy sealer. now, if you've used epoxy,
you kind of understand what it is. this is a much more loose version that we can paint onto thesurface, let it absorb, and it provides a greatfoundation for our top coat and the top coat is goingto be a marine varnish. this is called epifanes.a very thick varnish. we can thin it out, wipe it on. you can brush it on,however you wanna apply it. but, we'll add a few coats ontop of this sealed material.
and, okay, it's not quite bulletproof, but it's gonna basically insure that i don't have to refinishthis thing every year. let's start with the cpes. this stuff is pretty nasty to work with, so be sure to use a respirator. combine equal parts of resin and activator and mix well for two minutes. even though it's epoxy, the material is
brushed on like any other finish. i'll keep adding extra finishto the thirsty end grains, 'cause that's the part that'sgoing to touch the ground. the wood soaks thisstuff up pretty readily. once i finish one of the legs, i move on to the apronand work my way around the entire base of the bench. everything gets coated inside and out. for the seat, i'll startwith the underside first.
any runs or drips can be cleaned up when i flip the piece overand work on the show surface. i let the epoxy dry for 24 hours and then give it a light 320 grit sanding. if the sandpaper gums up, you need to let the epoxy cure longer. vacuum up any remaining dust and get ready for thesecond coat of epoxy. this time, the surfacedoesn't soak it up as quickly,
so you can work a little bit faster. once again, every nookand cranny is coated. the second coat will beallowed to cure overnight and i'll apply the first coat of varnish first thing in the morning. i'm using epifanes' clear varnish, thinned about 50 percentwith mineral spirits. the secret sauce in this process is that we're intentionally applying
the varnish before theepoxy layer is fully cured. this way, the varnish isn't just coating the epoxy, it's being glued to it. this is what'll help prevent the varnish from bubbling and flaking in the future. the varnish is applied with care using a decent, natural bristle brush. because the varnish is thinned, it should have no problems leveling out
and hiding our brush marks. i left the first coat ofvarnish dry over night, then i lightly sand with 320grit and apply a second coat. after the second coat of varnish is dry, i switch over to epifanes'woodfinish matte. this stuff will knockdown the high gloss sheen and give us a much moreattractive looking bench. the regular epifanes gloss is so glossy, that you can't really eventell which slats are wet
and which ones are dry. i'll apply two coats of this stuff and each coat is diluted by about 10 percent with mineral spirits. but check out what happens as the first coat of matte begins to dry. big difference. once fully cured, it's timeto attach the base to the top. a small blanket helps prevent scratching
as i line up the baseand drive the screws. on my outdoor projects,i like the tops to be removable for repair and refinishing, so there's no need for glue here. alright, well this is looking pretty good. the matte finish, i think,is really the way to go. for me personally, i don't really like the high gloss finishes. now outside, a high glossfinish will probably
do better because it reflects a lot of that harmful uv light. but, the thing is, i justdon't like the look of it, so i'll go with the matte,we'll see how it holds up. but it is an epifanes product,so i feel pretty confident that it's gonna last quite a long time, especially with that epoxy undercoating. alright, now just a few extra details. you can see, took the designfrom something fairly simple.
and we didn't go nuts with it, right? we just added a couple details with that taper on the inside of the legs. the crown on the outside faces. and the curvature ofthe slats in the seat. and that's just such a minor detail, but it's amazing how much of a difference it makes when you sitin it and you realize, "oh, that's actually quite nice."
so little details can make thedifference in the final piece and you can see you don'thave to over embellish. there's a point where you go too far, you add too many things, or maybe you take too many things away. so it's a practice of restraint as well. okay, but i'm happy with the result. i can't wait to put this outside and just see how itholds up over the years.
hopefully you'll build one too. let me know what you think about it and, hey, if you're not in the mood to do all these mortises and tenons, use one of the other million ways that you can put pieces of wood together. but, if you wanna domortise and tenons, hey, it's a great project to practice on. thanks for watching.