Girlfriend's Bench (Matching the Table)


minorhero

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Hello again folks,

 

Now that the Dining room table (seen ) is in the finishing stage. It is time to start thinking about the matching bench. My girlfriend has been quite pleased with the progress of the table and is quite excited about getting it in her place. But from almost the second I have told her I wanted to build her a proper table she has been asking for a matching bench to go with it. With that in mind I have come up with a design that I think will match the table but I have some concerns.

 

My first concern is how do I attach the top of the bench to the base. (sound familiar? ^_^  ) On the one hand I know I can use a similar hardware option as the dining room table with metal pieces in place to hold the thing together and allow for wood expansion. On the other hand the bench will only be 16" wide and thus should have less then half as much wood expansion as the 36" wide table. I really want to just glue the bench top right to the apron and to the 4 legs. But I am concerned that wood expansion will split seams etc. What is the best method?

 

My second concern is structural stability. I am planning to make the 4 legs out of 10/4 cherry. All other pieces will be made out of 6/4 cherry with two pieces being made out of 6/4 hard maple. The long aprons that stretch the length of the bench will be 2.5" wide and have a tenon that goes 3/4" into the leg. I want the bench to be able to support at least 500 lbs if it needs to. Is this going to be adequate? I feel like if I am gluing the top to the aprons and legs it will lend a lot of structural stability and I will be fine. If I am not gluing the top to the legs and instead letting it kinda float with hardware holding it more or less in place, then I worry it wont be enough.

 

As far as wood goes the whole thing is cherry except the long stretcher on the bottom will be hard maple and the center strip on the top will also be hard maple.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

Here is a link to the google sketchup model

 

And here are some pictures of the model

 

post-171-0-12303400-1410629826_thumb.jpg

post-171-0-84864700-1410629831_thumb.jpg

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I would attach the same way you did the table.  

 

You didn't state how long these benches will be so, I figured 36", 48" and 60" in the Sagulator.  36" and 48" showed acceptable and 60" came up with excessive sag.

 

I would suggest you running your numbers in the Sagulator in case I missed something.

 

http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm

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Hmm if I go by the sagulator then my design is essentially a non-starter. Even if I made my aprons 9" deep with one on each side, then according to the sagulator it would still sag by .29" This frankly does trips some alarms in my head regarding the sagulator but I will error on the side of caution and rethink my design. I do not want to add a third leg in the middle, but I might have to do that. 

 

Another idea is to make the short sided aprons the same thickness as the legs and add a third apron going across in the middle. According to the Sagulator this makes very little difference, but I am not sure I believe that thing heh.

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Well with the table complete its time to be moving onto the next project, and in this case the next project is the matching bench. 

 

Today I went down to the hardwood seller and picked through their boards. I was a bit more careful this time in the boards I selected. Unfortunately they did not have enough 6/4 cherry in wide enough selections to make the top out of 6/4 cherry. So instead I went down to 5/4 cherry for the top, the aprons are still in 6/4. I will have to make the stripe of maple a bit bigger then I intended, but otherwise things went pretty well. 

 

Here are some pictures of the lumber after I moved it to the shop. Now it just needs to get acclimated. 

 

eECwsac.jpg

 

TKDeFAQ.jpg

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Not much to report but I did get into the shop a bit today. 

 

I used the time to go ahead mill the wood flat on 3 sides. I am pretty pleased with my wood this time around. Definitely got some better looking boards this time from the lumberyard when compared to last time for the table. It really pays to go over the boards with a fine tooth comb when looking at them.

 

kUxss4i.jpg

 

The 10/4 cherry is to the left obviously. Just next to that is the 6/4 maple, and the 5/4 cherry for the top of the bench is all the way to the right. I am considering putting both cherry boards into the middle of the bench and then splitting a piece of maple up and gluing two strips of maple to either side of the cherry instead of one strip down the middle of the two cherry boards. This change is because the board to the far right is really a very pretty board and is quite wide at around 10". I think I want to preserve that wideness rather then cut the board down to about 6" wide so it will match the usable area of the other 5/4 board.

 

I also took some time and dug out the loose knots and then filled them in with epoxy died black. I used a heat gun this time to get rid of air bubbles. It also has the added benefit of making the epoxy much more liquidy which makes it sink in considerably better.

 

O3kcOui.jpg

 

Tomorrow I should get a chance to cut the legs and start making the tenons and mortises.

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