Arbortech: Build A Bench Part 3

Look at my legs, these legs. The legs have had a few evolutions since you saw them last. So let's talk about what's happened there. I created feet on the legs just by doing this V, with the hole drilled at the top of the V. When you put a seat on a bench like this, a good height for the seat is 18 to 20 inches.

So I plan on putting the seat at 18 inches. That's this line right here. When you have an armrest on something, it's nice for that armrest to be about 10 inches above the seat. So from here to here, top of the seat to bottom of this armrest is about 10 inches. That information is what led to this curve.

The top of the curve here has got enough material left that it's going to support the back and then it S curves down to my armrest. I did that work with the jigsaw, so once I had it laid out, I grabbed a handheld jigsaw and just followed that curve, keeping in mind that it's OK to be a little bit outside the line because we're going to come back and do another step now. The step we're going to do now is with the turbo scraper. This is a cool device. What it's got is carbide cutters.

And in this case, the cutters are negative rake. The benefit from that to what we're going to do next is that this is all in grain. So the negative rake scrapers are going to do a really nice job of taking care of this end grain. What I want to do here is clean this up. I want to make it look better and I also, as an armrest, as an edge in general, I don't want it to be the sharp corner.

What I want is to ease that. I want to round that over a little bit so that it looks better and it's going to also feel better tactilely when you're sitting on the bench, and I'm going to do all that by working with the turbo scraper. Wood grain be and wood grain, the best way to do this is from this side I'm working down in this direction. Next thing I'll do is flip this over, do the same thing from the other side so that we're always working in grain. We'd say we're working downhill this way, and that's going to give us our best possible surface finish here.

So I'm going to flip, do some work on the other side, and then we'll come back and have another look at our legs. Once you have a shape with the turbo scraper, then we can go back to the sanding disc as we have done numerous times before and clean up as much as you want. I like kind of a rustic look to this, so I'm gonna clean it up with sandpaper a little bit, but I also want to leave some of these facets. I love how that looks. So, it gives it kind of a hand-carved look.

I'm gonna do a little bit more on this and uh go from there. Not bad. I'll flip that over and work from the other side. But net net, we're gonna end up. with a couple of legs.

With their top edges looking like this, it's gonna be pretty cool. This whole project has been a bunch of fun, but this next step, I think, is gonna be really fun to do. Where I'm going next is to carve a scene into the back of the bench. Before I do that and get going on it, let me catch you up with a couple of things that have happened. When you look at the end grain here of the seat, you can see these big holes in it.

When you look at the ends that are behind me, they've got big holes in them. So that's all about the joinery that's gonna hold this thing together. Here's how I went after the joinery. I dry-fit the entire bench, the seat, the back, put it in clamps so it was secure, and I knew it was exactly how I wanted it to be positioned. Then I put a one-inch red point bit in a drill, and I drilled holes through the ends and into the end grain of the back and into the end grain of the seat.

In the end, when I put this whole thing together, I'm gonna use hardwood dowels in those holes, and that is gonna be — that's gonna provide the joinery that holds the whole bench together. So a couple things I like about this. One is contrasting color. I'm gonna use walnut and cherry dowels. That's gonna look great against the pine.

Two, they're one-inch hardwood dowels. This is gonna be very robust. It's really gonna do a nice job of joinery. Now here's where we are. I'm gonna carve this scene that I've got laid out, and we've got stuff going on here.

There are evergreen trees, there's a river, there are mountains, and that's the sun or the moon setting or rising — that can be subject to your interpretation. I'm gonna do this work with. ArborTech's precision carving system. So that's this — these heads are interchangeable into this arbor. So as I use different stuff, I'll end up just unscrewing the cutter, put in another cutter, move on from there when I have bigger spots to sweep out, I'm gonna use the ball gouge for that.

This is gonna be a cool process, creative process. It's gonna be fun to, uh. Try to eliminate everything that does not look like mountains, moon or sun and pine trees and rivers, so. I think it's time to just play and get started on this and start taking away wood. I'm very happy with how this came out and honestly in the absence of Arbortech carving devices I couldn't have done this so I love that it made it accessible for me and I love the way it made it come out.

It's got a cool kind of a hand carved vibe to it without me having to do the hand carving and my mountain tree river sun scene. I love how it looks. I am so happy with how this bench came out. I honestly can't say enough about it. People that have been in my shop and seen it absolutely love it.

I'm thrilled that I took the time to put that swale in the seat using the spokeshave plane because now there's a nice spot for your butt when you sit in it, it makes it very comfortable, a little bit of angle that's on the back of it also makes it very comfortable. Great project, very fun to do this using the Arbortech system. I would do this again in a heartbeat.