Charlton Bench Shaping

Before getting too far ahead with the shaping of the bench top, the holes for the staked legs need to be drilled while the wood is still flat. There is a handy jig at HCS that when clamped to a drill press it lets you plunge a forstner bit at a proper angle for a standard staked piece of furniture. There's no measuring or calculations involved at all, its just eyeballing which is music to my ears. The forstner bit bores a cylndrical hole in the wood which needs to be tapered after with a reaming bit so a conical shaped tenon at the end of a leg can be pounded into the hole. 

Shoot, no pictures for this step..

Next, I used an electric planer to create the round over along the edges of the bench. This worked really well, this tool is awesome for rough shaping. The round over is a 3 ¼”radius and to make it as accurate as possible, I cut a template from plywood and used that as a gauge to keep checking my work as I slide the planer along the edges.

Here's a look at the progress while planing the sides down.

My handy little plywood gauge for checking the radius of the bench top

With the edges and sides roughed in I used the angle grinder with a Kutzall disk to blend the corners down to a 3.25" radius using the gauge to get it spot on. This all worked really well and to the naked eye the form looks just fine, no need for more precision than this.

Corner blending with the Kutzall underway

 To finish the bench top it was all orbital sander from 40 grit to 80, 120 and lastly 180.

This is after 40 grit sanding. Sanding is usually brutal, but 40 grit sanding feels like carving because it's so abrasive so I like it.

The legs should have been the easy part if I had a lathe and knew how to use it, but I figured I could make something close enough to a tapered leg with a spoke shave and the oscillating belt sander in the shop. I had some left over ash already cut into an octagonal profile so I cut to length and started with the tapered end of the leg that is to be hammered into the bench seat. There is a handy tool specific to this task. It is like a huge pencil sharpener. You should use a lathe to get the ends cylindrical like a pencil so it can be inserted into the pencil sharpener but I was able to get these close enough by hacking away at it with a chisel and sanding smooth on the oscillating belt sander. Then the ends go into the pencil sharpener, twist away and you have tapered ends to your bench legs that should fit perfectly into the conical holes reamed into the bench top. I had to slim down the taper quite a bit on the oscillating sander to get the precise fit I wanted but it did work.

Here's a look at the tapered tenon cutter tool, pretty helpful

Next I wanted to taper the legs themselves. I started with a spoke shave which was very slow and exhausting so I went to the oscillating belt sander and tapered it on that by rolling the leg in my hand while pressing the taper profile I wanted into the belt. I ended up developing a nice little technique that if I'm ever out of a job would earn me good money working under bridges. This process was also slow, but not as tiresome as the spoke shave, the end results are pretty good. To the naked eye these look like legs turned on a lathe but I tricked yah.

I should have taken a photo of the legs aligned next to each other before temporarily pounding them into the bench seat but you can see from this picture that they all look fairly equal, no lathe required!

Next week I’ll assemble the bench and see what I can do about those pesky gouges in the bench top that were a result of the banged up pieces of old timber I used. I’ll also figure out how I’m going to finish this piece, until then here's my top 5 wrestling finishers. See you then!

Nate's Favourite Wrestling Finishers - No debating

5 - Razor's Edge - Razor Ramon

4 - Yokozuna, Banzai Drop

3 - Tombstone Pile Driver, Undertaker 

2 - Rock Bottom, The Rock - My go to back yard wrestling move with my boys but it doesn't beat the....

1 - Stone Cold Stunner, Stone Cold Steve Austin - And that's the bottom line..

Notable omissions

Sweet Chin Music, Shawn Michaels - Best Intro Music though for Too Sexy

Pedigree, Triple H

Mandible Claw, Mankind