Outdoor b-ball bench

[wtnhighlander]

So, my wife asked me to build a bench to put next to the driveway, because all the boys in the neighborhood like to hang out at our house and shoot baskets with our son (we have the only concrete driveway around).

She gets tired of junior coming it with stains on his butt from sitting on the grass, hence the bench request. I just happen to have recently gained posession of a 2" x 8" x 16' hunk of white oak, air dried approximately 8 years.

Flying by the seat of my pants, I started cutting wood with only a vague Idea of how it will turn out. With the bench being 60" long, I needed to make the top as a set of slats to get a reasonable width. This should help avoid water standing on it, too.

Here is a shot of the board as I was rough cutting to length. My circular saw lacked about 1/8" cutting through the thickness.

It takes a lot of milling to dimension a board this rough. (This dust is for you, RichardA! I know you like white oak!)

So, here are the roughly milled pieces for the bench. Three piece slat seat, 2 uprights for each end, +2 pieces to form corner braces at the top of each leg, +2 wider slabs, from which I will bandsaw some 'feet'.

I don't plan to get too fancy with joinery. The leg uprights will fit between the seat slats, and be pinned with dowels. Mortise & tenon join leg uprights to the feet. The corner braces will be doweled between tbe slats, and notched & doweled into the uprights at 45*. Epoxy on all joints, and bottom of the feet.

Here is what's left to make dowels and any repairs:

Hope I don't need many repairs, because that's all the white oak I have!

[Coop]

That's going to be a pretty stocky bench. Should hold all the younguns in the neighborhood.

[davewyo]

Your bench looks really interesting.

I'm looking forward to the build.

D

[RichardA]

    You've got it going on Ross, but where is your rectangular dust collector?  Wanna borrow mine?

[wtnhighlander]

Had a few minutes of shop time during DWTS, here is what happened:

That was making 'tenons' on the tops of the legs, so the seat slats have a little ledge to rest on.

Amidst all the background clutter, maybe you can tell that is the seat and legs clamped together, upside-down on the workbench. The wider pieces on top are blanks for the feet. I needed to mark the spacing for the bottomeg tenons while the blank is still square.

Moving quickly so far, but I feel a slowdown coming on ....

[wouldwurker]

Looking good buddy.  I love an OTF build!

[wtnhighlander]

Quick update: had a few minutes to work on the bench yesterday and today. Cut some of the joinery for the legs and feet.

I challenged myself to do as much of this project as possible with machines, so I used a shop made tenon jig & crosscut sled to make tenons at the bottom of each leg. For the mortices, I transfered the layout lines around the sides of the board, marked the width of the bit on my router table, adjusted the fence to center the board over the bit. With the board flat against the fence, I dropped it over the bit, staying between my layout lines, and only plunging 1/4" or so per pass. I quickly learned that wihite oak is much easier to plunge cut than to cut with the flutes! I flipped the board around and repeated to ensure a centered mortice. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

You can see in the photo that while this technique worked, it isn't terribly clean. I attribute that to some slop in the mounting plate of my shop-built router table.

At any rate, I had to fall back on chisel and mallet to clean things up, and since I was chopping anyway, I chose to square the mortice, rather than round the tenon.

Hope to have more & better photos tomorrow.

[Coop]

Will you be using epoxy?

[wtnhighlander]

Epoxy is the plan. Although I've had good results with Gorrilla glue original for outdoor projects in the past, it is just to stinking messy. That crap gets EVERYWHERE!

[wtnhighlander]

Ok, looking for opinions on how to join the gusset to the leg:

What you see here is cut at 45* and held in place with a clamp. I can't decide between a loose m&t, or a through dowel.

Any suggestions?

[Coop]

Ross, on 3/25/05, pwrfulz3r0 ( there's that signature topic again) did thread in General Woodworking, on a Shaker stool. The plans are in FWW, 2/2013 edition. That would be a neat way to tie the brace into the legs.

[wtnhighlander]

Thanks Coop! Looks like I have to have a membership to see the entire article, but from the intro pics, it looks like a lapped dovetail. Can you confirm that?

That would be a really cool joint to use, but I'm afraid it would make the triangle too small to work as an effective brace, since I already cut it to length for using a tenon or dowel.

I'll look it over tomorrow, and see if there is enough stock to try something like that.

[Coop]

If you find you have the stock and want to go this route, pm me with you e-mail and I will scan and send you a copy from the mag. (If I can legally do this? I 'm sure I will find out shortly!

[Tim Kohl]

love the build, but your do realize they will still be sitting on the ground, while they scoot the bench under the basket to dunk the ball

[wouldwurker]

A through dowel at the same angle might be the easiest to execute. Then wedge the end and flush it up.

 

Edit: dowel drilled in at an angle, I mean, in lieu of 90 degrees where they butt up.  You'd get that much more surface area in both pieces.

Edit Edit (sorry) - plus you'd have a good bit of long grain to long grain in at least one of the pieces.

[wtnhighlander]

After careful consideration of multiple joint techniques, I realized that I was suffering project creep in a big way. I was thinking about pillowed plugs and relief carvings, for cryin' out loud!

Sanity has returned, so a through-dowel it will be, as soon as I can get back to it.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

[wtnhighlander]

I finally got a few minutes to jump back on this. Tonight, I decided to trim the legs to create a setback from the edge of the feet:

The edges will all get a tight roundover, eventually.

Still working on the joint for the angle brackets. Coming up with a way to hold the parts for through drilling is tricky.

Working on a way to bore both parts from the inner face, so the dowel 'tenon' isn't visible. Here is my idea, based on the tools at my disposal:

1. Mark the center and diameter of the dowel hole on the angled face of the bracket.

2. Drill the center for one of those dowel center marking plugs.

3. Use the plug point to mark the center on the leg face.

4. Fill the plug hole in the bracket face with a small dowel, cut it flush, and remark the center using a compass from the radius marked in step 1.

5. Drill both sides to final size and depth. This will require a jig to hold the angled face square to the drill bit.

If anyone sees a problem with this plan, please point it out, before its too late!

[wouldwurker]

Sounds hard as hell to nail that angle if you're drilling twice. Seems your mind is made up on no through ' tenon',...but in case it's not, with a contrasting wedge it could look pretty sweet.

[wdwerker]

Through dowel /tenon from the inside ! It can be blind from the outside. Much easier !

[wtnhighlander]

I agree the through dowel would be stronger, and would look fine, especially with a wedge. I'm just having a hard time getting the pieces clamped together in a stable manner, so I can drill through both. If I end up drilling each separately, I figure the hidden dowel is a good choice. I'm open to ideas for holding the work at the drill press...

[wdwerker]

Add a 45 cut block clamped to brace, drill from the cut face on drill press. Put a dowel center in the hole, line it up and give it a strong tap. Drill the leg freehand or on the drill press.

I use Blokkz to help clamp, you can make something similar from scrap.

http://www.blokkz.com/2-universal-clamping-blocks-ucb-with-2-neoprene-pads-buy-2-pairs-and-save-10/

[wtnhighlander]

Ok, I took a shot at the hidden dowel approach.

First I placed the dowel center slightly toward the thicker side of the piece. Then I used it to mark the drill point on the leg.

I drilled the leg on my little drill press, but wound up clamping the angled gusset in my bench vise, and drilling it by hand. The holes are about as deep as the cutter of the forstner bit.

I used the same forstner bit to mark a piece of cut off, from which to turn my dowels.

I used a handscrew clamp to hold the piece, and roughly split away most of the waste.

Then I sawed the two dowel blanks apart, and mounted one in my lathe. One reason I wanted to hide the dowel is that my poor turning skills, and salvaged cheapo lathe result in pretty rough turnings. This way, the gaps are covered!

After getting it mostly round, and close to size, I cut it to length with my worn out japanese style saw. These things seem to last forever!

Here is how it goes together:

Dry fit seems reasonable, so I will move ahead with the remaining legs. I will also work some shadow line details into this joint to cover any slight errors in matching the drilled 'mortices'. Now if I can just get some time to complete it! Stupid spring weather, making grass grow and stuff...

[wouldwurker]

Turning your own double-secret hidden dowels? That's as bad-a$$ as they come, Russ. Sweet execution.

[..Kev]

Good job!

[wtnhighlander]

I had time to complete the other three dowel joints tonight. It was an interesting process, but if I had to do it over, I would think harder about getting all the holes done on the drill press. The forstner bit wasn't that hard to use in a hand drill, other than speed control. What bit me in the butt was the brad-point I used for the dowel marker hole. I suppose the flute corners were catching on entry, and skewing the hole off my center mark a bit. This made the alignment of the leg and bracket off just a touch, but nothing a bit of G&G style detail can't hide!