I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to design and build my own wooden bench. So I decided to buy one and blog about it. This is the first post in a series, and the plan is to cover each step of the process in detail, with lots of pictures.
First things first: the bench has to be sturdy enough to hold an adult’s weight, yet light enough for me to move around easily. The thickness of the wood matters too; all my woods are about 4 inches thick. And being able to get wood from a local source is important–being a DIYer means if you can’t get your wood from someone else, you have to go find it yourself.
The design is simple: on one side, a shelf for my weights; on the other side where my feet will rest, another shelf. It’s got two sides so that I can use it as an end table or coffee table. At this point I’m still pretty happy with it: although I think it could be better designed, its definitely usable.
So, how do you design and build a wooden bench?
This series of posts will show you how to design and build a beautiful wooden bench. The first few posts will focus on the technical side of designing and building a wooden bench, with each post introducing some new technique. A fifth post is planned to provide a more detailed overview of the process.
If you would like to get started making your own bench, I suggest you read through the first few posts before starting (see links at the end).
A wooden bench is a great project to do with your kids. They will learn a lot about wood, and it will be fun for them. And you can get a nice finished product for relatively little money.
The most important thing about building a wooden bench is that you have to do some woodworking in order to make the bench. I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to me saying, “I just want a bench!” and I have to tell them they can’t just buy one.
There is an old argument that design objects should be made in the best possible way, with perfection to avoid flaws. The argument is usually used to attack the use of wooden components in furniture design, because it is hard for a level of perfection to be achieved.
It is also used to defend the use of “mass produced” products, because mass production is supposed to get rid of imperfections.
But what about wooden benches? The same argument can be used in their favor. It can be argued that building a bench made from wood with perfection as an objective will always be difficult. And it can be argued that there are certain things you might want to get right when building a bench, like how it looks or how it feels.
So what kind of thing makes a good bench? How do you know whether one design is better than another?
I’m not a woodworker. I’m a designer. But I have to make stuff that looks like something, and this is one of the ways I’ve learned to get it right.
I first saw these benches in the early 1990s. They were made by a company called Benchcraft, who made them for custom order and sold them unfinished as kits. The customers would finish them themselves, or commission them from other furniture makers. There were two basic styles, both built from old-growth redwood lumber: the Maple Bench and the Redwood Bench, which had turned red through weathering from exposure to California’s coastal fog-shrouded interior rainstorms.
The thing that struck me about those benches was their utter simplicity. They were just four-legged structures, with a seat built into one end and a handle on the other for hanging bags of feed or mail or whatever else you might want to hang on it. At first glance they looked like an afterthought; but then you noticed that they were perfectly flat and even all around, as if they had been designed that way from the beginning. What was most striking was how simple they were: no fancy “lumber” joints or complicated glue work, just simple planks nailed together neatly, with no
A bench is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a good garden; a garden with a bench is an essential but not sufficient condition for a good bench.
Suppose you have made your bench, and it’s not satisfactory. You build another one, and it’s not satisfactory. Should you stop?
This is the wrong question. It’s the wrong question because the right answer depends on what you want to do with the bench. If you want to sit on it and rest your feet, the answer is: “Go ahead.” If you want to lean against it while you work or eat or read, no, it’s too small. But if you want to work there; well, that’s often what benches are for.
With benches for gardens there are two kinds of people: those who sit on their benches and those who want to sit in them. The problem for the first group is that most benches are too small – they will seat two people at best – but once they have sat in them they don’t want to give them up. They love them! The problem for the second group is that most benches are too large – they will seat three or four people at best – but once they have sat in them they don’t want to give them up
I am a writer. I’ve been writing for about 20 years. When you are a writer, your income varies, but it’s usually $200 to $400 per month. I have never been paid by an author to write a book review. I am now.
I can’t tell you how much this is worth to me. It’s the most important thing I have done in my life. In fact, the first time I ever heard of this book was after it was published and people started emailing me and asking, “Hey, if you liked this book, what would you recommend?” All this time I had been thinking, “What would I recommend? What should I write about?” And every time I wrote a review, all it said was, “This book is good.”
So when someone asks me what book to read next and I say “this one,” what they’re really hearing is: “This book is worth at least that much money to me.”