DIY Outdoor Bench - Modern Bench How-To

welcome back to the workshop thank you so much for joining me in today's episode today we're gonna build this here outdoor sitting bench [Music] well drawing things on the blackboard might not be my strongest skill but this will do a good job this bench is gonna be looking fairly simple in its construction but we're gonna have to deal with a couple of we have angles here and there the main structure will just consist of two main rectangular frames one to sit on and one as a backrest and where gets tricky is the legs you see the way we're gonna make the legs is that they're gonna be tilting out at an angle sideways and at an angle front to back as well as the frame you sit on is gonna have a slight tilt backwards and backrest is gonna have a slight tilt backwards relative to the seat rest as well for this project this guy is definitely gonna be my best friend because we have some weird compound angled cuts to do for the legs in addition to that drawing on the chalkboard I've also made myself some nice drawings in 3d so I've chose them all this bench in 3d mainly because of the legs because their angle in two different directions it's just easier for me to draw it up in 3d and let the program figure out all the angles which is what I've got right here this is all the measurements and dimensions to make the four pieces that will make the two legs on either side of the bench and the mirror image of this will be the opposite side I'm now going to use the measurements from the drawings that I made transfer them onto a couple of pieces of wood and then start cutting them out [Music] [Applause] [Music] using my drawings I've transferred those measurements onto a piece of wood one for each leg on one side of the bench and the next step now will be to start cutting all these weird angles these cuts are definitely gonna be the most complicated ones in the entire build so we might as well just get done with them right away I'll need to make one cut on the top and one cut on the bottom of each leg and each of those cuts are going to be composed of two different angles so we have one angle that makes sure that the leg leans backwards and one angle that makes sure that the leg leans inwards so let's get started this first angle is going to be 82 degrees sideways which should be 8 degrees off of 90 and it says that the other angle is gonna be 76 and a half which means that I need to lean this blade over this way thirteen and a half degrees okay that is the first cut done you can see that it has an angle right here and an angle right there and we'll do the same thing on the other side the angle on this one is the same but here instead of thirteen and a half the angle eight degrees the top angle is going to be five degrees less because the tilt of the sitting surface with couples the top and the bottom angle on the miter saw and all that's left to do now is cut the third side on the bandsaw that's it one leg Don we'll cut out the other three pieces and then we'll see if they all stick together [Music] [Music] four individual pieces are cut now it's time to see if they actually fit together and if all by measuring and 3d modeling and all that was worth it yikes so these are the two back legs this is the back part this side is the back and then this one should just line up so nicely okay I'm very pleased with how this has actually turned out two surfaces at the top line up perfectly when these are flush against my table let's see if the two in the front line up that should oh that looks great okay that's gonna be the front leg you're standing straight on now that means that basically all the complicated work is done the only thing left to do now is basically just redo all this for the other side of the bench just the mirror image of these parts [Music] surprisingly enough that went without any major hiccups I've tested all the four pairs of legs and they all fit together great the next step will be to start assembling these and by that I mean screw these together in pairs so I'm gonna start by drilling a big hole with this sharp 10 millimeter drill bit so that the entire head of the screw will sit below the surface that is so that I can plug the holes and not have any visible screws big holes are drills next step will be to assemble these leg pairs and I'm just gonna use the 90-degree edge of my table to make sure that these end up 90 degrees relative to each other and with some clamps to lock them in place I can now pre-drill the holes for the screws that I'm gonna put in and that is one of the back legs assembled both the top and bottom are flush as well as the outsides this is quite promising let's do the three others [Music] [Music] that's all four legs complete and that worked out pretty well the only thing that we're left with now are these pretty big and ugly holes with a screw inside of it each one of them and I want to fill these holes and know where we're gonna do that is that I've taken this board of the same material and use this funny-looking drill bit and drilled a whole bunch of holes into this board the only thing is that this drill bit doesn't make holes but it makes sort of like these plugs and these plugs we can now use just like a screwdriver or the back of my knife to pop these little plug thingies out and then apply a little bit of glue in the hole take one of our plugs align it the way we want to and Hammer it in and once the glue dries we can send everything flush and then it will look really good and I even think that these plugs give a little bit more character to the way we join these legs together and while the glue on these legs is drying I'm gonna start making the frame that's gonna hold everything together and we're gonna make that out of just another length of board I do however want the frame to be quite a bit slimmer than the full width of this board so I'm gonna head over to the saw and trim it down to a more fitting size so because of the angles of the leg is the internal frame that holds the legs together we'll also have to have a few weird angles luckily I've got all of that stuff in the drawings so just set my saw and I'm gonna cut those pieces right now [Music] right that's all the beatings cut the web now we just need to cut them to length [Music] this thing is definitely starting to take shape I've test assembled it with some clamps just to make sure that everything actually fits together and it mostly does however there are some gaps here and there and that is because of the fairly steep angle of the back legs here you see even though these legs are screwed together at a 90 degree angle and we can demonstrate that by this test leg that I made here you see when I hold it straight onto the camera like this it's a perfect 90 degree angle right there but if I start tilting it backwards the angle gets narrower and likewise if I tilt it forward angle opens up and that's why I have some small gaps here near now it would be quite complicated to actually account for all these angles and it would lead to even more weird cuts so instead I think we can just screw these together and clamp everything together and I think that will be fine and before we start screwing everything together for good now it's a good time to sand these edges and the Front's here because there will be harder to access after we start assembling things more [Music] [Music] that is one frame complete most of the small little gaps that we had earlier kind of just even themselves out there still some small gaps here and there but most importantly we have a frame that is completely flat there's no wobble to this whatsoever now let's cut out the rest of the pieces that will make up this seat for this bench and then we'll start assembling those as well [Music] and after a bit more cutting we've now got all the pieces that we need to assemble the bottom half of this bench I've got four pieces right here that are gonna make out the sides of the seat and all the small pieces around here are basically just to attach these four pieces to the frame itself I'm also going ahead and run it over the two sharp corners that were left after the table saw so that everything kind of looks the same again [Music] and after a bit of sending the seats portion of the bench is now finished I send it all the plugs that we hammered and flush with the frame here and everything looks really good while the glue dried I cut a few more parts quite similar to how we made the parts for the seat I started by taking some lengths of board and cutting them to a thinner thickness I then cut them to length and around and over the edges with a router the same way that I did for the other parts and what we're left with now are most of the parts for the backrest and the only two parts missing now to complete this entire bench are the two parts that will tie together the backrest with the base I've printed out the template for this part I don't quite simply just glue the piece of paper on top of a couple of pieces of wood and then cut everything out with the bandsaw [Music] [Music] now that is all the pieces done for the entire bench and all that's left to do is just assembling everything basically doing the same thing that we did to deceit to the backrest as well I'll start by marking out all the places where we need to drill holes and then that will make the assembly after the fact very easy and quick [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] that's it it's finished I just want to interrupt myself really quickly here so the bench is finished and the material I used is severe in larch lark lark that is a type of wood that doesn't need any treatment and if you just leave it outside it will be just fine over a long period of time it will eventually develop like a sort of grayish tone to it now I really liked that grayish tone and I want to speed up that process so what we're going to use is some of this iron sulfate mixed with water and we're gonna spray that on we're just going to mix up about a hundred grams of this stuff with about a liter of lukewarm water and then head outside and spray it on it's kind of weird it kind of feels like what snow [Music] that was easy enough I'll let you know in a couple of months how all of this turned out you can follow me on Instagram and I'll post something there look at this thing turn out really nice I'm very pleased with the result there's not one single visible screw in the entire bench which I find really cool so I really hope that you enjoyed watching me build this bench I certainly had a lot of fun building it if you want to build your own bench I'll make a set of drawings available to download on my patreon page there's a link in the description head on over there and at any support level you can download the drawings for this thing keep in mind though I did simplify the angles for the legs a little bit so that their pieces are easier to cut out but it will force you to kind of like screw everything together like I did with the legs in the frame everything else should go together no problem and I guess if you don't want to build a bench but want to support me anyways you can also head over to patreon where you can support my channel or you can simply give this video like comment down below or maybe subscribe if you're not yet and as always thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you guys in the next one bye [Music]

Channel: Alexandre Chappel

Views: 79,563

Keywords: maker, make, outdoor, sitting, bench, modern, diy, home make, home improvement, carpenter, carpentry, woodworking, woodworker, design, designer, productdesign, drawings, plans, larch, instructional, how-to, how to, how, to

Id: 475ZjMdq3oc

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 02 2019