Rustic Entry Bench
This is a rustic entry bench I built for my Dad’s 68th birthday. It fits nicely with the style of his home. It is made from a single slab of birch that had been air drying since 1968. The insects got to it during this time so there are a lot of worm holes in it. The legs are assembled to the top using wedged angled through tenons. They are angled by 6 degrees to add stability and are actually tapered (12” at the base, 10” at the top) but in order to keep the live edge I ripped them in halves, put a taper on the inside edge and re-glued the halves together. I sort of helped mother nature 😉 48” long x 14” deep x 18” high. Finished with polymerized tung oil.
I actually got 16 slabs like this (~10’ long) so I know I will be making more of these benches. Hence I invested a fair amount of time building different jigs to help with various aspects of the building process: a cradle with a long router base to flatten the top, a jig similar to the Leigh FMT to shape the angled tenons using a router, a cross-cut table saw sled with a six degree bed angle and a few others. Working with live edge components is different because there are no straight edges to use as a reference for the milling operations.
Comments
looks great! I love the live edge on benches.
I love live edges on furniture! Great job and beautiful work!
I should try a project like this for the mud-room in my log home. a very nice job. Do you think using spar varnish mixed 50/50 with mineral spirits, then 75/25, and finally straight spar varnish would be any better. It seems to work well on the furniture I've made. Just a thought. Would appreciate any feedback. Thanks.
I have made quite a few live edge tables and benches. One of the first things I do is strike 90 deg.chalk lines from end to end and side to side on the slabs to establish straight lines for reference. Then all measurements are taken from these lines.
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