Entryway Bench Part 8 - Taking a Seat for the Finish

This is the home stretch.  The bottom of the bench looks good and is inspiring me.  The plan is to add a curve to the top of the bench to give it some shape and make it inviting to plop down onto to pull off snowy wet boots during the winter after a hard day of shoveling snow.  I also want to add a round over to the bottom of the seat so to carry the shape from the ends of the rungs up to the top of the bench.

So I start with some sanding to flatten out the top and remove any glue squeeze out.

Before sanding:

After Sanding:

Things are going so smoothly at this point I forgot to stop and take pictures!  I cut one side down on the table saw to give it a straight edge then measured and cut the entire seat to length.  Next I attached the curved template I've had around for the seat since the beginning of the project.  I took the seat to the bandsaw to rough cut the curve then I finished it with the router and a template bit.

I turned the seat over and routed around the sides and front with a large round over bit.  This should make it easy on the figures when opening the lid and give the top the same upturned look as the bottom shelf rungs.

This is what the top looks like after it's final sanding.  It's a little blurry because my hands are vibrating from sanding for an hour.

And here's the bottom:

I've added a coat of boiled linseed oil here.  It really makes the greens, browns and purples in the poplar much more distinct.

These are the pieces after their first coat of Minwax Polyurethane.

This is a close up of the bench seat with the Poly.  Two more coats with some light sanding between and this bench will be ready for some hinges, which at this point I still haven't ordered...maybe I should get on that.

Cheers!
-G

Entryway Bench Part 7 - Assembly

It's time to get some of this stuff glued together!  We'll start with the bench top so it can continue to be worked on while the rest of the bench is glued up...in theory.  (In actual fact nothing happened to while the bottom of the bench sat in clamps for about two weeks.)

So here's the top of the bench clamped between cauls to keep it flat and with a good portion of my brand new pipe clamp collection holding the pieces tightly together.

I labeled the joints with a sharpie to avoid confusion while gluing and clamping.  The last thing I needed was to glue the pieces together backwards or upside down.

Sometimes a snug fitting joint becomes a little tight when glue is applied.  Notice the Ikea assembly tool in the picture below.

Now for the hard part.  Tip: Grow extra arms, get a helper or use glue with a long working time when assembling this many pieces.  I of course did none of those things.

It all worked out!

Now with the base glues up the seat can be measured out to exactly the right dimensions.

-Cheers!

Entryway Bench Part 6 - All rung out

We pick up today with the bottom rungs cut to length.  Here they are hanging out on the bottom shelf not doing much of anything.

Still just sitting around.

If you rungs don`t do something soon I`m going to ...

Oh great, the lower stretcher joined them and still nothing`s getting done!

Here we go!  Step 1 is to double stick tape the template onto the rung.

After trimming the curve as close to the template as possible on the band saw I clamp the rung to the table.

The router that was prominent in the last two pictures finally got plugged in and made the curve flush with the template.

I cut into the rung on both sides using the tablesaw.

Here`s the end of one rung after it's been rough cut on the bandsaw.

I had to peel the double sided tape off of the rung with a card scraper.  You can see the curled tape below.

Those lazy rungs are now hard at work making the bench look awesome.

Still looking awesome.

Ok, the top needs some work next, it`s not so awesome yet.

Cheers!