A Small Construction Project

Hi All,

I have once again taken over my wife's blog to bring you an announcement. Well, that sounds drastic, let me re-phrase that. I did something cool, and wanted to tell people. I built a bench!

Well, now that it is put that way, it doesn't sound so exciting. Well, I think it is, so Nah!

It was a lazy saturday afternoon. It was a good day to tear into a new project. Lana and I were putting around the house and doing this and that. We had a tasty lunch, and I was looking for something new to do.

Several weeks ago (Was it that long ago?) we had a family field trip to the Frontier Culture Museum. We had a blast there looking at how things were done, how things were used, how things were done - by hand. It was fun and amazing. Well, one of the things that I noticed while I was there were the way some of the benches were built. Now, mind you - I don't have an Adz, or a proper hatchet (for the time), so I couldn't build any of the benches we saw in the German house, nor did I have any good-sized trees that I could cut down and build like the ones in the English house.

The ones in the gift shop - now those I could build! They were made almost like my workbench - with lots of boards laid sideways and fixed together. I had a few loose boards of treated lumber at the house, so I decided that I would try to build a few.

When I got home, I looked over my meager pile of wood and decided I couldn't build it exactly like the ones we sat on. But I could get it close enough to learn some of the design, and maybe build a prototype.

I don't know if any of Lana's reader's know this or not, but we are planning to build a pergola in our back yard - at some point in the near future. Well, my plan is to have some benches and tables made for us to use in the shade of that pergola. If you don't know what a pergola is, google has lots of pictures of them. But basically, it is a back deck with some very simple shade built over it.

Well, yesterday, I was feeling my oats and decided to see how big a bench I could build using the "Frontier Culture Gift-Shop Bench" method. I dug through the wood pile, and gathered a bunch of 1"x6" boards, and started laying out my design.

The pile of wood wasn't as big as I thought it was, and I depleted it rather quickly. So I had to build a much smaller bench than I hoped. I trimmed my dreams back a bit, and finally settled on a small bench. I trimmed off the ragged edges of some boards, and shortened others until I had eight boards of roughly the same length - that weren't falling apart. I picked out eight shorter ones - Exactly one foot four and a half inches long - to be the legs.

By five o'clock, Lana was telling me to stop sweating, stop playing, and get ready to go over to see our church-friend's new baby. A tall order for me - I sweat like crazy. I hung out under the living room ceiling fan to cool off. After visiting with them, playing and holding the baby, and giving them a wonderful feast for their dinner, we came back home. I'm sure Lana will tell more of that story later. But in short, we had a blast!

After getting home, we were hungry. It was getting dark, and my hopes for finishing the bench in one day were dwindling. I went back outside, and surveyed the wood-pile I had made. Everything was cut to length, and the plan to assemble it all was already done. I figured I could still finish it - if I hurried. So, I turned on the driveway lights, and grabbed my hammer.

I am quite sure that I woke up the neighbors at least once - I wasn't very easy on the nails I was using. I wanted them IN THE WOOD. Two nails per side, for every two layers, and the thing was done.

I wasn't very happy with the end result - I didn't have much of a straight-edge for making sure the boards were lined up - although it probably doesn't really matter. The boards themselves were old and warped.

I picked up the result of my hours of work, and set it up-right on the driveway. And it rocked back and forth. You can imagine how inventive the cursing was at that point. Of course, Lana decided to come out and check on me at this point. I showed her the bench, and she was very pleased at how it looked. She rocked back and forth on it a little, to see how steady it was. Of course, it rocked a little, but otherwise it was exceedingly sturdy.

While she was sitting on it, I poked around the (bench) legs, and found the culprit. One of the legs had slid down while I was hammering away at it. so it stuck out about a quarter-inch. Not too much, but enough to make the whole thing rock. I fetched my fine saw, and turned the bench up on it's end - after helping Lana up off of it. Five minutes of frantic sawing later had the bench much more stable than before, although, it rocked a little. I wasn't very happy with it, but it was my prototype.

I moved the bench to the front porch, and set it under the window - on the other side from the swing. And much to my surprise, when it was sitting on the flat concrete of the porch - it was incredibly stable. No rocking at all. Apparently, the driveway where I was doing the construction had a large curve to it to help drain the water off quickly. This was making the bench rock - not the construction.

I called Lana out to see the "finished" work. She was happy with it, and we spent at least ten minutes sitting on it together, watching the neighborhood go by - or at least, the night-owls go by.

Later,
-M