Cedar Bench
harrison17 Feb 23, 2017
Besides a small practice piece, this is my first mortise and tenon project. These were my first tusked tenons and first wedged tenons. We had a deck put in and I had a lot of cedar scraps left so I decided I wanted a bench for the garage. I used black walnut for the pegs and wedges. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but I hate working with cedar. If I looked at it wrong it left a dent and it liked to tear instead of cut. Finished with a few coats of Danish oil and six coats of poly.
Pretty dirty. Wire brush took care of that
Planed up nice
It had been sitting for a couple months by the time I started working it. After I planed it I could tell it was still wet and so I let it sit for awhile. I'm glad I did because the wood warped a little
That was a good feeling when they fit
Walnut was taken from an old small chunk of walnut my grandpa gave me that still had the bark on one side
At this point I put a chamfer under the seat, tapered the leg edges towards the seat, and cut a slight angle on the tenon going through the legs. And steamed out a million dents
Testing it out before gluing and hammering in the wedges
Getting the tenons flush was pretty tough. I left too much material when I sawed them (no flush cut saw) so there was a lot of chisel work
This was the last coat of poly right after I put it on
Love this bench! I have some wood, I was thinking of using for a bench and think this would be the perfect design. What's the height, length, and span of the legs?
You chiseled the tennons down? Did you plane flush after?
@rushane said:
I used a saw first, but at the time I didn't have a flush cut saw so I stayed pretty far away from the bench. That left quite a bit of material to chip away at with my chisels and when I got them reasonably flush I used my plane to finish them off.