After the first bench I submitted to Wooodworker’s Journal earlier this year that I made for my youngest daughter, I made the following bench for my other daughter.
I bought the plans from Rockler and modified the design somewhat. The wood is natural Cedar I bought from the Mendham Plywood store in Mendham, New Jersey. All joints are mortise and tenon with exterior screws and plugged with cedar. I made several full-size patterns for the curved portions of the bench out of 1/4″ plywood. This was a tremendous help when cutting these parts with a band saw. Since the wood is somewhat soft it was easy to cut the mortises, first with a router or Forstner drill bit then squaring the edges with a chisel. The tenons were cut using a combination of a table saw with a dado blade and where needed a band saw. I left the wood unfinished and expect it to “gray” over time. It took me about 3 months of part-time work to finish the bench. I had a lot of fun building this bench and look forward to building another one for my son. Then all my children with have the fruits of my well-loved labor.
-Bill Cafero
