This interior shutter project has a lot going for it, including excellent light transmission that doesn’t compromise privacy and simple modular construction. You can use almost any wood for these shutters, but typically it’s best to either match or complement your existing woodwork. I used vertical-grain pine that has a naturally attractive ribbon pattern and a medium ivory color. It’s also easy to work and relatively inexpensive. A translucent shoji-style fiberglass material works well for the screen, but there are a number of other materials you can use, such as rice paper and plastic-coated paper.

Keep in mind that this is a millwork project, so it doesn’t require quite the high level of workman-ship you might devote to a furniture project. The thickness and width of the parts work for most window sizes, so you only need to adjust the length. For very large windows, you might want to scale up the size of the parts or add more lattice strips to the grid. The variations on this project are almost infinite, so you’ll likely want to add your own special touches.

Measure, Mill, Join Frames

You’ll need to start by measuring your window casing and checking it for square. Measure the exact opening, then subtract about a quarter inch from the sides and top/bottom to allow a little room for swing clearance and space for the hinges. (Most carpentry isn’t as precise as your woodworking, so you may need to make some adjustments after you assemble the frames.) For large windows or ganged windows, consider making bifold or multiple shutters to span the area.

Because this project lends itself to mass production, it’s best to mill the frame parts for all the windows you intend to cover before doing any joinery, to ensure consistency. (Read on to learn more about making the lattice strips.) A jointer and planer are almost a necessity to achieve straight, square and uniform stock. You might want to sand the parts lightly before you start the joinery.

There’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to joinery. I used a Festool Domino to make floating mortise-and-tenon joints. This tool can quickly make strong, precise joints. However, a biscuit joiner is just as fast and makes acceptably strong joints. You can also attain very good results with dowels or pocket-hole screws.

Once you’ve glued and clamped the frames, you can sand them with 150-grit paper. Be sure to ease the edges enough so they won’t splinter, but don’t round them too much. If your shutters are a matching pair like this project, mark the top edges with arrows that point to the front and inside stile edges. This will serve to keep the shutters paired and correctly oriented. Check the bare frames in the window casing to be sure they fit with some room to spare and make necessary adjustments. If the fit is too tight, trim the inside stile edges that form the closure between the shutters.

Now is as good a time as any to cut the translucent screen material. This should be done before fastening any lattice parts inside the frame because the bare frame serves as a pattern. The easiest way is to lay the frame on top of the screen material and trace around the inside with a pencil; then use a metal straightedge and a utility knife to cut the material.

Make Lattice Strips and Router Jig

If there’s a fussy part of this project, it’s making the lattice. The 3/8″ x 3/8″ lattice strips must be uniform, and the half-lap joints that form the grid must be precisely made. There are a number of ways to make the strips, but I’ve found that using a band saw and a planer is efficient and it keeps waste and dust to a minimum.

First, rip wide pieces from 3″ or 4″ stock roughly 7/16″ thick. Next, rip 7/16″-square strips from these pieces. Now you need to remove the saw marks and mill the strips to exactly 3/8″ square. Run the strips through your planer, making four total passes: the first two on perpendicular sides of the strips to remove about 1/32″ and then a third and fourth pass on the opposite sides for the final 3/8″ dimension. The strips might not be perfectly square, but the deviation with pieces this small will be insignificant — try making a few practice pieces first. (If your planer won’t adjust down to 3/8″, you can make a subbase out of particleboard or MDF to fit under the planer’s cutterhead.) Make more pieces than you’ll need because you’ll unavoidably have some ruined pieces.

You can use a table saw to make the half-lap joints, but I think a router jig is more accurate and makes cleaner joints. The half-lap routing jig is simple and easy to make with MDF or particleboard and a few bits of hardware. There are two basic parts: the base and the router carriage. The base has a thin hardboard fence attached to it to align to workpieces so they’re perpendicular to the router carriage. The router carriage is adjustable for different stock thickness with the carriage bolts and should be made to fit your router (or at least the guide rails positioned for your router’s base). Adhere sandpaper or self-adhesive abrasive strips to the carriage bottom to prevent stock from shifting. To ensure that the jig makes accurate cuts, all the parts should be square, the carriage bolt holes should align perfectly in the base and router carriage, and the fence on the base should be perpendicular to the slot in the router carriage. The fence should be the last piece you install because it’s dependent on how the base and router carriage are aligned. Finally, run the router into the fence with a 3/8″ bit to create an alignment mark.

Cut Half-lap Joints

There are several tips that can increase your success in cutting the half-lap joints. You should cut all the strips to the exact length before you cut the joints. Use the shutter frames to determine the fit, and you might want to make dedicated sets of strips for each frame in case there are slight dimensional differences.

Once you cut the strips, use masking tape to gang them together with the ends perfectly flush. Mark the joint locations in pencil, and then scribe the joint lines with a utility knife. This will help prevent any chipping or tearout from the router. When you place the ganged strips in the jig, be sure they’re abutting the fence, that the joint lines correspond with the router alignment mark on the fence and that the carriage bolts are securely tightened. Also, place an extra piece of lattice to the outside of the ganged pieces to help balance the height of the router carriage.

Rout the joints with a 3/8″ straight bit and make the cuts in two passes while keeping the router pressed against the guide rails. Work carefully and don’t force the router through the cut. Use dust collection if your router has it. It will enable you to see the start and stop of the cut much more easily.

Assemble the Lattice

You’ll assemble the front lattice in the frame and the rear lattice as a standalone unit. The rear lattice acts as a retainer for the screen material and provides visual balance when the shutters are open.

Begin by marking the 1/8″ setback guidelines for the front lattice inset with a combination square and pencil. Before you start, make a dry run to ensure the grid strips fit properly in the frame. The strips don’t need to be glued; pin nails provide all the needed fastening.

The holes made by the nails are so small they’re almost invisible, and don’t need to be filled. Attach the vertical lattice strips to the stiles then the horizontal ones to the rails. Now you can add the inside vertical strips with a little glue in the joints followed by the horizontal strips.

The rear lattice goes together the same way with glue in all the joints, but it’s not permanently attached to the frame. You just need to check that it fits flush over the front grid and isn’t too large (or small) for the frame. To fasten the front and rear grids together, you need to bore screw holes and countersinks for #4 x 5/8″ brass screws through the rear grid into the four inside grid intersections. Install the screws to cut the threads before you finish and assemble the shutters.

With the grids completed, now is a good time to set the hinge positions. The shutter hinges have removable pins so they work on the left or right side. Unless your shutters are very large or heavy, stick with two hinges on each side. Three or more hinges can cause binding and complicate installation. It’s important that the screw holes are perfectly centered to keep the hinges aligned. I used a self-centering Insty-Drive bit for this purpose. Remove the hinges before finishing.

Finish, Assemble, Install Shutters

Sand the assemblies with 150-grit paper and be sure to ease all sharp edges. There’s no need to sand too much or with a finer grit paper — the finish will hide many imperfections. Thoroughly clean off all the dust before applying finish.

Because the shutters are next to windows, they’re exposed to more light and temperature variations than other woodwork in your home. A film finish will help reduce seasonal wood movement and protect the wood from wear and tear. I brushed on two coats of a clear waterborne interior finish and opted not to stain because the natural color of the wood was appealing without alteration. For a smooth finish, sand lightly with 320-grit paper between coats to remove dust nibs.

Once the finish has cured, install the screen material. The fiberglass shoji that I used is stiff enough so that no glue, tape or staples were needed to retain it in the frame. But you might need to fasten thin paper screen to the back of the front grid if it doesn’t stay put. Install the rear grid over the screen and install the brass screws; then reinstall the hinges.

Installing the shutters isn’t difficult, but there are a few steps you can take to reduce any possible frustration. Use a thin spacer between the window casing and the shutter to eliminate the possibility of binding. The hinges also have a slotted hole to allow for vertical adjustment, so use only this hole until you’ve installed the opposing shutter and can align the pair. If the shutters are a little twisted in the frame, you can try moving one of the hinges slightly out to compensate. And if the gap where the shutters meet isn’t even, use a shim behind the hinge leaf. When the shutters seem reasonably well-aligned, install the rest of the screws. I installed a magnetic touch latch to retain the shutters. It eliminates the need for knobs to open and close the shutters to maintain a clean appearance.

If you’re like me, once you’ve built a few of these shutters, you’ll want to make more sets for other rooms in your home. They’ll help keep your rooms light and airy even on the most dreary days.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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A lot of prototyping has gone into these rockers to get their shape just right. And it’s surprising how much more relaxing the chair is to sit in with them! They raise the seat height a few inches so it’s easier to get out of, and the rocking motion feels stable and pleasant. I think you’ll really enjoy the enhancement! And with the exception of adding the rockers and two blocking pieces, you’ll build the exact same Adirondack chair using the original template kit.

The cut list in the template kit calls for the following six boards: two 1 x 6 x 8′; one 1 x 8 x 8′; one 2 x 4 x 8′; one 2 x 6 x 8′ and one 2 x 8 x 8′. Add a second 8 ft 2 x 8 to the tally so you’ll have ample material to make the two rockers.

From Cardboard to Hardboard

If you already have the chair’s templates, the only new one you’ll need to make from scratch is the rocker shape, and there’s a gridded Drawing for that purpose. I didn’t build the chair for the 2020 article, so I ordered a set of the cardboard templates. I began by tracing each one onto 1/4″ hardboard to create rigid versions for template-routing. I rough-cut those to shape, then sanded them carefully up to my layout lines until they matched their cardboard counterparts. You can skip this step if you buy Rockler’s MDF template kit instead or if you plan to just cut out the chair parts after tracing them with the templates.

Now, create a template for the rockers. I made mine from a scrap piece of 7″ x 37″ plywood. Draw a grid of 1/2″ squares on your template blank, then using the drawing as a reference, carefully plot and mark enough points on the workpiece grid to approximate the rocker’s major top and bottom curves. I used a long scrap of 1/4″-thick x 2″-wide MDF as a flexible batten to draw these large curves. The smaller front and rear end curves of the rocker shape were easy to create by tracing around a small French curve.

Once you have the overall rocker laid out, mark the front and back leg positions on it to match our gridded drawing. Then cut out the rocker template and sand it smooth. Take your template to the drill press and drill a 1/8″-diameter hole through it at the bottom two corners of each leg, marking these positions.

Shaping the Parts

Lay out and crosscut slightly oversized blanks of project lumber for all of the parts except for the back slats, follow ing the Material List. Those three back slats will need to be cut to exactlength to obtain all three from one 1 x 8 x 8′ board. Then use your templates to trace, cut out and template-rout the back legs, arms, arm braces, front cross brace, lower back brace and upper back brace to final shape.

When these parts are done, trace the template for the middle back brace onto the top face of its blank. Now, take either the lower or upper back brace templates and compare them to what you’ve drawn on the middle back brace workpiece. The front angles of the upper and lower back braces (that will support the three back slats) match one another, but these angles don’t match the middle back brace, right? They should; it’s a mistake in the middle back brace template, and other builders have discovered this already. To fix the problem, I simply used the lower back brace template to redraw the two angled lines on my middle back brace workpiece that will support the outer two back slats. The position of the center back slat on the middle back brace template is fine where it is.

Now, cut the middle back brace to shape with a jigsaw or band saw. This part requires making three bevel cuts where the back slats will attach to match the backrest angle of the chair. While the printed note on the template specifies a 30-degree angle, I found 25 degrees to be a better overall fit. Arrange the saw or the workpiece so that the blade angles out toward the front, concave edge of the workpiece, and cut out this shape. I made these bevel cuts on the band saw by attaching my workpiece with double-sided tape to a scrap that was bevel-ripped to 25 degrees. That way, I didn’t have to tilt the band saw table off of level, which would have made the bevel cuts harder to guide. Or, tilt your jigsaw’s shoe to 25 degrees, and make the bevel cuts this way instead.

Give all the workpieces a thorough sanding up through at least 120- or 150-grit. I then eased their sharp edges with a 1/8″ roundover bit in a compact router to reduce the chances for splinters.

Building the Framework

At this point, you’re ready to do some assembly! Start by attaching the front cross brace to the back legs with pairs of #8 x 2-1/2″ exterior screws. Align the top edges of the parts and drive the screws through the front cross brace into the front ends of the back legs. Drill countersunk or counterbored pilot holes first to prevent splitting the wood. I counterbored these, and all the other screw holes on this project, so I would be able to cover them with wood plugs.

Next, cut the front legs to shape from 5-1/2″-wide stock. I made these blanks 25-5/8″ long to start with. Then angle-cut their ends to 10 degrees with these miter cuts parallel. That creates the 24-5/8″ part length noted in the Material List.

Go ahead and attach the front legs. To do that, lift the front cross brace up until the “feet” of the back legs are flat on your work surface. Now, position the front legs against the outside faces of the back legs so their front edges are flush with the bottom front corner of the front cross brace. Be sure the bottoms of the front legs are also flat on the work surface. Clamp the back and front legs together in this position; the bottom edge of the front cross brace should be about 9-1/2″ up from the bottom front corners of the front legs. Attach the front legs to the back legs with three #8 x 2-1/2″ screws driven through each front leg.

Next, on the top edges of both back legs, make a mark 1″ back from the point where the curve for the seat begins. Slip the lower back brace between the back legs and align its front edge with these back leg reference marks. Its top face should be flush with the top edges of the back legs. Attach it with pairs of #8 x 2-1⁄2″ screws driven through the back legs and into its ends.

You’re ready to attach the arm braces to the top outside faces of the front legs with pairs of #8 x 2-1/2″ screws driven through the front legs. I located the braces 1″ back from the front edges of the legs. Then grab the middle back brace and both arms. Arrange these three parts and clamp them together so the back ends of the arms overlap the ends of the middle back brace and the back corners and edges are flush. Check that the arms are square in relation to the middle back brace; their inside edges should also be about 24-5/8″ apart and parallel. Drive pairs of #8 x 1-5/8″ screws into these corner joints to secure them.

Now, set this arm assembly on top of the front legs and adjust it so the front ends of the arms overhang the legs by 1-1⁄2″. The arms should overlap the inside faces of the legs by 1/2″. Drive three 2-1/2″ screws down through each arm to attach it to the arm braces and front legs.

Adding Back and Seat Slats

Set the back slats into place so their bottom ends are aligned with the bottom face of the lower back brace, and space the slats about 3/8″ apart. Attach the back slats to the lower and middle back braces with #8 x 1-5/8″ screws. Use three evenly spaced screws per joint. Once that’s done, you can clamp the upper back brace to the back faces of the back slats.

Locate its top face about 3-1/4″ down from the tops of the slats and attach the slats to it with #8 x 1-5/8″ screws, driving three screws per slat into the brace. Go ahead and install the three seat slats, too. Arrange them so the front seat slat overhangs the front cross brace by about 1/4″. Position the other two seat slats so there’s consistent space between all three.

Making, Installing the Rockers

Use your rocker template to create two rockers on some 2x stock. Notice in the Exploded View Drawing that installing the rockers requires adding a blocking piece between the rockers and the back legs. These account for the offset arrangement of the front and back legs. To make the blocking, set your back leg template in position atop the rocker template, and draw a line across the back leg template where it crosses the top edge of the rocker template.

This lower portion of the back leg creates the blocking shape. Use the back leg template to draw two blocking shapes onto scrap 2x stock and cut them out. Then set the blocking pieces into position against the outside faces of the back legs and screw or nail them in place.

Remember those nail holes we first made in the rocker template? Now’s when they’ll be very useful! Set the template onto each rocker workpiece with their edges flush and use a thin casing nail inserted into the nail holes to prick the leg corner positions onto the rockers. (Keep in mind when doing this that the rockers are mirror opposites of each other; you’re marking the leg positions on the inside face of each rocker.)

Use the nail marks to align the rockers on the legs and blocking and clamp the rockers in place. It’s a good idea at this point to set the chair on the floor and test the rocking action to make sure the chair rocks evenly and well. Then attach the rockers to the legs with pairs of 5/16″ carriage bolts, washers and nuts. You’ll need a pair of 3-1/2″-long bolts for each front leg/rocker connection and two 5″-long bolts for each back leg.

Finishing Up

Finish your rocker however you prefer with exterior stain or paint. Or leave it bare; it will weather to gray. I filled the screw holes with wood plugs first, to hide them. After cutting and sanding those flush, I brushed on two coats of an all-in-one primer/paint. Give the finish time to thoroughly dry. Then your “easy chair” will be all set for relaxing outdoors.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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With that feedback in mind, senior art director Jeff Jacobson and I decided to design and build an updated version that has some of the best features of an Adirondack chair but addresses some of the shortcomings. Jeff built two prototypes before he was satisfied, and this chair is the result of those efforts.

The outside frames are built in a “Z” shape and are then joined together with a series of cross braces. I chose African teak from Rockler as the lumber for the frame and crosspieces. It is excellent for outdoor projects as it resists rot very well (but not quite as well as the Asian teak that most folks are more familiar with). It machines well and, while there is a wide variation of hues in the lumber I selected, when finished with an outdoor oil I think it looks lovely.

For the seat and back slats we used 1/2″ pine lumber. I can almost hear you thinking, “Pine is a terrible outdoor wood!” And that would be true if it was not painted — then it holds up great in the great outdoors. The chair’s design also allows the slats to drain, so no puddling of water, which also is a hedge against rot.

How So, Domino?

I want to say a couple of things about the joinery of this chair. I happen to be a fan of Festool’s Domino loose-tenon system. At the same time, I understand that Domino machines are financially out of reach for a lot of woodworkers. Even so, I wanted to try out Festool’s Dominoes made from sipo wood — a species that resists rot. But if you want to build this chair and don’t wish to use the Domino system, let me say that dowels would be another perfect product for joining the legsets, too.

And while I also used Dominoes to join the cross braces to the leg frames, you could do that with dowels or even with screws driven in from the outside of the leg frames.

Terrific Templates

I chose to make a complete set of MDF templates for every piece of this chair’s framework (with the exception of the seat and back slats). Not only does it speed up the building process, but as it is not uncommon to build more than one of this type of chair at a time, they also will make that easier down the road. A set of templates can also help to minimize measuring errors, because many of the project parts can simply be traced to shape using the templates.

Start by ripping the leg pieces to width. Then mark out the shapes of the different pieces using the templates. With that done, step over to your miter saw and use the templates to set the angles that you need to cut. That’s another benefit of the templates. The last step in forming the legs is using a taper jig to cut the long tapers.

To form the backrests, use the template to lay out the pieces. Cut the angles on the backrests with a miter saw, and then use a band saw to cut away most of the waste close to the long remaining line. Next, step to the router table chucked with a flush-trim bit. Attach the template to a backrest blank with double-sided tape and rout the shape.

Cut the remaining section (the back) of the top angle on the band saw. Now cut up blanks for the seat cross braces. Attach the cross brace template to a blank and template-rout the shape onto the cross brace. Repeat this for all the cross brace pieces.

Doing the Dominoes

Now it’s time to chop the mortises for the Domino loose tenons for the legs and backrest subassembly. Using two 8-mm Dominoes at each joint, they will form a strong connection. Machine the mortises and dry-fit the subassemblies together with the Dominoes in place. When you are convinced that all is well, move on to gluing and clamping the parts together. I used Titebond III, as it is waterproof and has a reasonably long open time. Clamping these pieces together is a bit of a puzzle, but using the cutoff blocks of waste, and double-sided-taping them to the edges of the pieces, I was able to get sufficient clamping pressure to make it work.

While the glue was curing in the leg frame subassemblies, I moved onto machining mortises into the ends of all of the cross braces. It was straightforward work. Put two mortises in each end of the 4″-wide cross braces and one mortise centered in the seat cross braces. Wait on the headrest for now, as you’ll need to locate the mortises at the top of the backrest first.

When the glue has cured on the leg subassemblies, it’s time to sand them smooth. I worked up through the grits from 80- to 180-grit. I softened the edges of the legsets with 220-grit sandpaper, just to remove the sharp edges.

Next up, I needed to bore holes through the seat cross braces and upper back cross brace that allowed me to screw the seat slats to the chair with the screws hidden from view. See the Drawings on the next page for how these two-step holes work. I used #8 x 1-3/4″ flathead zinc screws. They need to extend 3/8″ beyond the edge of the cross braces to penetrate into and secure the seat slats. Take note that the outer holes need to be bored deeper, because the piece changes width, and the holes on the upper back cross brace are just counterbored, as it is a much narrower piece.

Proceeding with the Seat Layout

With the leg subassemblies prepared, it’s now time to lay out the mortise locations for the seat and seat back cross braces. I confess that it was at this point where I decided I would rather just screw them in place, but I persevered with the Dominoes. Three seat cross braces are mounted on a line that runs squarely back from the front edge of the front leg. For this location, see the Drawings.

The cross braces that support the back slats are mounted with their back edges flush to the back edge of the backrest. See the Drawings for their location, too. If you, like me, are using a Domino machine to form the mortises for the seat cross braces, you will need to use a scrap fence clamped in place to help you cut the mortises accurately. Remember how I had you wait to cut the mortises into the headrest? It will make sense now as you need to get the plate of the Domino machine past the bend in the backrest. Locate the mortises at the top of the backrest, then transfer the locations onto the headrest and machine them.

Now let’s back up a bit and address this process if you are not using a Domino machine. If you are using dowels, it would be pretty much the same but would be a bit easier to lay out. If you are using screws driven in from outside the leg frames, you should lay out the cross brace locations on the inside of the leg frames and then drill a small-diameter pilot hole from the inside of the legs outward. Those holes will give you the location where you can drill the counterbore or the countersink (your choice). If you choose to counterbore, you can make your own plugs from African teak with a plug cutter. The screw holes will almost disappear under the plugs.

However you choose to do it, when you are done it’s time to dry-fit all the joinery. Be certain everything comes together correctly, because once you start the glue-up for real, you are committed and there is no going back. I started the glue-up on my workbench, applying glue into the mortises and to the ends of the cross braces. Once I had them all in place, I put the other leg frame on top of the assembly. This is possible to do by yourself, but another person helping makes it much easier.

Still on the bench, I clamped across the headrest, the wide cross brace between the front legs and the other wide cross brace between the back legs. Then I carefully lifted it from the bench and stood it up on the floor. In that position, it was easy to add clamps where they were needed to close up all the joints. Allow the glue to cure. Once the glue has dried, re-sand the pieces starting at 150-grit and switching to 180-grit. The chair frame now is ready for its finish.

Heading for Home

You are well on the path to completion, but there are a few more tasks to get done. If you have not already done so, go ahead and make the armrests. Carefully make the notches where they join the backrest. Note that the forward edge of the notch is angled to match the backrest. Lay out and form mortises on the top of the front legs, transfer the locations to the armrests and chop those mortises. Clamp the armrests in place and drill a counterbored hole through the backrest. Unclamp and take the armrests off, apply glue to the appropriate surfaces and clamp and screw them in place.

Now it’s time to make the seat and back slats. Take note that there are two widths (3″ and 3-3/4″) for each set. I painted my pine slats gray. You could make them from African teak or some other hardwood, too. That’s a design option — you choose. Whatever you decide to do, I suggest that you apply finish before attaching them. Same goes for the chair subassembly. I put two coats of General Finishes Outdoor Oil on the teak before I attached the slats, and I think it looked great.

When the paint and oil has cured, it’s time to complete the project. Screw the slats in place. I started with the seat slats. Space them evenly and drive the screws home. I tilted the chair forward to make it easier to get to the screws on the bottom of the cross braces. (Easier for this past-60-year-old, but still not particularly easy.) I found it necessary to clamp each slat in place before I could drive the screws. As I was using pine, I took care not to overtighten and strip out the wood fibers. For the back slats, I put a 3/4″-thick piece of wood across the seat slats to ensure that I located them properly. The back slats were easier (okay, easy) to install.

Here are two optional tips. The first is using epoxy resin to seal the end grain at the bottom of the legs. If the chair will be used in places where the leg bottoms will get wet, the epoxy will stop the water from wicking up into the wood fibers. This will help to keep the wood from breaking down over time. Five-minute epoxy works great.

Second, I wanted to hide the screw holes on the back cross braces. A 1/8″-thick strip pin-nailed in place did the job.

Now you are done! And you may be wondering if this design is more comfortable for smaller framed people — the answer is yes. While Mary was not available to try it out, we had a bunch of folks “test sit” in it with positive results. Most wanted to take it home and continue testing it over the summer. Hmmm …

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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If you build your plant stand from African mahogany as I did, it will hold up well to sun exposure and regular waterings without prematurely rotting — mahogany is an excellent choice for outdoor projects. Each plant box mounts to the frame’s uprights with a pair of 2″ connector bolts and cap nuts. Tightening them holds the boxes level. At the end of the growing season when plants need to come inside, just loosen the bolts to tip the boxes up for off-season storage.

Forming Box Joints at the Router Table

I started construction of the three boxes at my table saw by ripping 1/2″-thick, 3″-wide boards down to 2-3/4″, then crosscutting six workpieces to 10″ long for the box fronts and backs, plus six 5″-long pieces for the box ends. I arranged the panels for each box in the most pleasing grain orientation and labeled them 1 through 4. I also added a “T” for top and “B” for bottom near the long edges. These notations will be helpful to avoid confusion when routing the box joints in the next step.

I used Rockler’s Router Table Box Joint Jig and a 1/4″ spiral upcut bit to mill the box joints. The jig is easy to set up and has its own sled for clamping each workpiece vertically to make the slot cuts on the parts. Prepare it for use by installing the 1/4″ brass key in the jig and chucking the bit in your router table. Raise the bit to 1″ (which is 1/2″ above the jig’s base). Now adjust the jig so the brass key is exactly 1/4″ away from the router bit, and tighten the jig’s base securely in your router table’s miter slot with its lock knobs. (Rockler’s instructions will walk you through the setup process in more detail.)

While the photos show me routing an actual joint, you should really test the jig’s settings on scrap wood first to be certain the joints will fit together properly. It often takes small adjustments to the spacing between the jig’s brass indexing key and the router bit to get the pins and slots to fit well.

Rout the joints by setting the top edge of a box front or back against the side of the jig’s brass key and cutting the first slot with the workpiece clamped to the jig’s sled (this cut also forms a pin on the part edge). Then fit the slot over the brass key, re-clamping the workpiece against the sled, and make another pass to form the second slot and pin. Repeat this process to form the rest of the slots and pins. Then turn the part over, keeping the same top edge against the indexing key, and rout the slots and pins on the opposite end. Mill the joinery on the other five box fronts/backs.

To rout the corresponding pattern of slots and pins on the box ends, set up the pattern by fitting the last slot of one of the front/back pieces over the brass key. Now set the box end so its “T” edge is against the side of the front/back piece. Make a routing pass with both workpieces held in place — it will form a slot on the edge of the box end instead of a pin. Rout the rest of the slots and pins on this and the other five box end workpieces.

Assembling the Boxes

These boxes need a groove cut along the inside faces of the front and back pieces to house the bottom panels. Locate these two grooves 1/4″ up from the bottom edges so they align with the bottom slot cuts of the corner joints. You can cut them on your router table with the same 1/4″ spiral (or straight) bit raised to 1/4″. Set and lock the router table’s fence 1/4″ away from the bit, and plow the grooves all the way along the workpiece faces with their bottom edges held against the fence as you push them through the cuts.

Prepare three box bottoms from 1/4″-thick mahogany rip-cut to 4-1/2″ wide and crosscut to 9″ long. When those are ready, dry-assemble the three boxes with the bottoms in place to make sure the box joints come together well. If they don’t, trimming the ends or edges of the box bottoms slightly often will do the trick to close the joints the rest of the way.

Sand the box parts up to 150- or 180-grit, spread glue on the slots and pins and clamp the boxes together. Since the bottoms are made of solid wood, which will need to expand and contract a little bit with changes in humidity, don’t put glue in the long bottom grooves. Just let these bottom panels “float” in them unimpeded.

Before the glue hardens and when it’s still rubbery, scrape off any squeeze-out as best you can, and scrub the corner joints with a wet sponge to clean up the remaining glue residue. Give the boxes at least eight hours, or even overnight, to fully dry. Then unclamp them and plane or sand the box joints flat, if the pins stand a little proud.

Building the Frames

I had some 8/4 mahogany on hand, which is at least 2″ thick in the rough, to use for my plant stand’s framework. I crosscut 9-3/4″- and 20″- long pieces that were wide enough to form both bases and uprights, then ripped this stock into 1-3/4″-square blanks at my band saw. Smooth their faces with a hand plane or on the jointer.

Next, these four workpieces require an angle cut on one end so the assembled framework will tilt backward. You could make these miter cuts on either a miter saw or at your table saw against the miter gauge. Either way, trim one end of each frame piece to 22.5 degrees; the goal is just to trim the ends but not shorten the parts in the process.

Lay out the two uprights with the three hole positions for the connector bolts, using the Plant Stand Frames Drawing. That hardware requires two hole diameters: 7/32″ for the bolt and 3/8″ for the cap nut. At each hole location, drill the smaller hole size (for the bolt) all the way through the upright. Then, on the outside face of the upright, widen each hole with your 3/8″ bit, drilling to a depth of 3/4″ to recess the shaft of the cap nut.

Use the smaller bit size to drill a hole through the end panels of the boxes for the connector bolts, too. Position these holes 1″ in from the back faces of the boxes and centered, top to bottom, on the box ends.

Most woodworkers these days own a pocket-hole jig, and that’s the joinery I used to connect the frame bases to the uprights. To do this, I set up my pocket-hole jig for drilling 1-1/2″-thick stock, and I bored a single screw pocket into the longer bottom face of each frame base, adjacent to its angled end.

Now connect the bases to the uprights with 1-1/2″ pocket screws. Then sand the two frames up through the grits to 150 or 180, and break all of their sharp edges and corners.

Finial Assembly and Finishing Up

You’re ready to put the five pieces of this project together to wrap up its construction. Slide the connector bolts through the holes in the boxes from the inside, fit the frame members onto the bolts and thread on the cap nuts. Tighten the bolts and nuts to hold the boxes level with the ground.

You can stain your new plant stand if you like. But I decided to just wipe mine down with a clear outdoor oil finish to highlight its beautiful grain.

Download the Drawing and Materials List

The post PROJECT: Three-Tier Plant Stand appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

That’s why this patio love seat is a lovely option. Its pocket-hole and countersunk screw joinery matches the ease of assembly of traditional outdoor furniture, and Rockler has developed cardboard and MDF templates to aid in shaping its curved and angled components. Another departure for our love seat is to use a wood species different from the cedar or cypress typically chosen for traditional outdoor projects (although those woods would work fine here, too). I selected mahogany because it’s a wonderful wood to work with, machines like a dream and has a lovely color and pleasing figure. It is also a very sturdy outdoor wood.

Getting Started

I chose to start on the curved pieces of the love seat. I got a huge piece of 1-1/2″-thick mahogany from the lumberyard (it was quite a surprise). After doing a little figuring, I was able to trace the legs and the other curved pieces onto the board, then break the stock down into smaller pieces using my table saw with a crosscut sled.

From there it was onto the band saw to cut out the shapes, staying about 1/16″ outside of the lines. I will be template-routing the pieces to their exact shape later, so that 1/16″ is a perfect amount of stock to trim away — it’s like Goldilocks, not too thick or thin.

A moment here regarding the templates: If you decide as I did to template-rout these pieces to make them exceedingly precise, you will need to use templates to guide those cuts. With the cardboard templates, you’ll need to transfer their shapes to MDF or hardboard to give the router bit’s guide bearing an edge to follow. If you select Rockler’s MDF templates instead, they will work perfectly for the template-routing task. However, you could skip the template-routing step by simply band-sawing the pieces close to the layout lines and then sanding them to their final shape instead.

Template-routing Time

With the band-sawing done it was time to move to the router table for template routing. I chucked Rockler’s 3/4″-diameter Flush Door Trimming Router Bit into my router table. Its 2″ cutting flutes are long enough to template-rout this love seat’s 1-1/2″-thick parts. Next, I needed to secure the template to one of the legs (the first piece I chose to shape). Traditionally, I’ve used double-sided tape for this task, and it works really well. It is important that the template does not move during this process, or your piece will be ruined.

The only downside to double-stick tape is that it can be frustratingly difficult to remove the top backing paper from the tape once it is in place on the workpiece. It seems as if it should be so simple, but often — especially with tape that has been in my shop for a while — it is surprisingly difficult to get that peel-away layer started. I’ve used chisels, knifes and screwdrivers, and still it can be a truly annoying task. Enter Rockler’s 2-Sided Stick-It Dots. They make this task so much simpler, as the top layer peels off easily. (Our publisher literally cannot say enough good things about these dots!)

In any case, secure the template to the workpiece with your double-stick product of choice, and carefully rout the workpiece to its final shape. However, do not rout the end-grain areas of these pieces. The router bit will tear out the end grain and make a hash of the parts … don’t ask me how I know this regrettable fact. Instead, sand the endgrain sections to their marked outlines. Repeat the template-routing process with the rest of the curved pieces. You will still need to do a bit of sanding to remove machining marks formed by the router bit, but it is quick work as the marks are small. Now onto the rest of the love seat’s parts.

Cutting Out the Straight Stuff

With the curved pieces behind you, now you are going to exercise your table saw. Rip the straight parts to width. The slats are 2″ wide and the front and rear aprons are 3″ wide. Then consult the Material List to crosscut them to length. A miter saw is perfect for this job, but your table saw outfitted with a crosscut sled is also a great way to get this done. The last part of this step is to form the appropriate angles on the arms, aprons and other parts. On the templated pieces, you can use the templates to set your miter gauge for making the angled cuts on the table saw.

At last, it’s time to start doing some assembly. Clear off a work surface that is large enough to lay out the parts that make up the sides of the seat (those are the seat aprons, arms and front and back legs — pieces 1, 2, 5 and 8). To properly align all of these parts, it’s very helpful to have stop board or surface to stand in for the “ground.” I found my table saw was a perfect place to do this first assembly, with the saw’s rip fence acting as the stop board.

Measure 13″ up from the stop board or fence to locate the bottom edge of the side seat apron. Mark the apron’s bottom, top and center locations on the legs. Remember when I mentioned that we used pocket-hole joinery as one of the ways we put this project together? Well, now is the time to grab your Kreg Jig and bore two pocket holes on the inside face of both ends of the seat apron. Don’t place them too close to the top edge, or the screw pockets will be noticeable under the slats.

Locate the seat apron between the legs and temporarily clamp it in place; it needs to be flush with the inside of the legs. Now put one of the arms in position on the frame and mark the location where screw holes will go through the back leg and down through the top of the arm into the front leg. Unclamp the assembly and bore those holes on the drill press.

Temporarily clamp the frame back together, positioning the side seat rail properly. Secure the arm to the legs with screws first. Then drive home the pocket screws in the seat rail to complete the frame. Go ahead and sand the inside face of the frame assembly and break the sharp edges. Now guess what … it’s time to do it all again for the other frame. But here is an important detail: the second frame is a “mirror” image of the one you just made. The side apron must be on the inside of that frame. See the Exploded View drawing to be clear about this.

More Subassemblies Come Next

Now it’s time to put together the remaining part of the undercarriage. Start by adding the corner braces and seat supports to each of the frames you just made. Bore countersunk holes through the face of two of the seat supports and through the corner braces. The holes on the corner braces should be on the long front edge and be drilled so the screws will be perpendicular to the members they will be attached to. All the corner braces will be flush with the bottom edge of the side seat rails. To mount the rear corner brace, first measure in 1″ from the 90-degree corner of the brace. Use that mark to locate the brace with the 1″ protruding past the end of the seat rail. Secure the rear brace with glue and a #8 screw. Repeat the operation on the other frame.

With the rear corner braces installed, grab a front corner brace and one of the seat supports. Place the narrow end of the seat support on the rear corner brace. Set the front corner brace in place, aligned with the bottom edge of the seat rail and so the wide end of the seat support is sitting on the front corner brace. With these three pieces correctly positioned, attach the brace and seat support with glue and screws. Do the same to the opposite frame.

To complete the lower framework, stand up the side assemblies and dry-fit the front and rear aprons. The top of the front apron lines up with the top of the side seat supports, as it will be fitting under the seat slats when you install them later. The back apron needs to align with the top of the rearmost seat slat (3/4″ above the seat support). Mark their locations, remove them and bore pocket holes on the aprons’ inside faces. Now attach the aprons to the front and back legs, remembering to put glue on the joining edge of the corner braces. Use 1-1/2″ pocket screws to secure these joints, completing the undercarriage.

Time to Add the Slats

We are really making progress now! The next step is to install the slats for the seat and the back. Put a #8 countersink bit in your drill/driver and bore a countersunk hole at each end of the eight seat slats, centering these holes on the slat widths. Bore deeply enough that you can plug the holes later.

Set the most forward seat slat in place with it overhanging the front apron by 1/4″. Secure it with #8 screws driven down into the seat supports. Now set the other six seat slats into place, with 1/4″ spacers between them, and fasten them to the seat supports with countersunk screws. You may need to adjust the spacing on the last couple of slats to fit them properly in front of the rear apron.

When the slats are in place, flip the love seat over and mount the center seat support as shown in the Drawings. I chose to simply drive screws into the support through the front and back apron. But you could use pocket-hole joints here, if you wish. Then stand the love seat back up, and bore screw holes so that you can drive screws through the slats into the center seat support.

The back slats don’t need to be as precisely located as the seat slats. Keep the slats above the curve in the back legs, and secure them with pairs of pocket screws at each end of the slats. Center the slats front-to-back on the thickness of the back legs.

Plugging Along

I chose to plug all the screw holes on the love seat, and I made my own plugs from the same mahogany that I used to build the bench. Rockler sells a plug-cutting bit that I mounted in the drill press.

I only needed 16 plugs for the exposed holes, but I made a few extra just in case. Once they were bored into the workpiece, I used the band saw to cut them free.

If you wish to plug the pocket holes (especially on the back slats), Kreg sells a bit to make angled pocket-hole plugs. They also sell premade plugs. The choice is yours.

Glue the plugs in place using a water-resistant formula like Titebond II or III. Allow the glue to cure, trim the plugs flush with a sharp chisel and then get busy sanding. I sanded the love seat up to 320-grit. It is my opinion that the smoother the prep, the better the finish.

And speaking of finish, I chose General Finishes Outdoor Oil, applying three coats and allowing time for it to cure between each coat. I like this product because it’s easy to reapply in a couple of years when the wood begins to look dry and needs sprucing up again.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

The post PROJECT: Outdoor Love Seat appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

You’ll notice in the opening photo that I’ve shaped the wide front apron and bottom shelf with a “wave” style edge to create a sense of visual movement. That same shape is repeated across the top of the bench’s slats by using a large template to cut and rout the slats from a glued-up blank. But all these curves aren’t necessary. Straightedged timber would also work for the front apron, top slats and shelf. That’s the version of the project shown in the Exploded View Drawing. How artsy you want your bench to be is up to you!

Getting Started with Stock Surfacing

I use roughsawn western red cedar for almost all of my outdoor projects, because it stands up to the outdoors well and I love its color variations. But it needs some initial surfacing to make it suitable for this bench. So my first step was to run the stock for the 1-1⁄2″-thick parts across my jointer to flatten one face, then send it through my planer to smooth the other faces and reduce the boards to correct thickness. Do the same to your cedar if you’re also starting with thick, rough stock.

With that done, joint one edge of each board flat so you can use that reference edge to rip workpieces to width for the bench top slats, four aprons, lower shelf pieces, inner cross bracing and soil bin lid battens. See the Material List for these part sizes. Now go ahead and crosscut these parts to final length. I broke this stock down at my miter saw, using a stop block on my miter saw station’s fence to make sure the same-length parts would be cut accurately.

The 4x4s I purchased for the legs and bottom stretchers were already milled quite nicely, with flat, smooth faces and square edges. So I just cut the legs and stretchers to length without any further surfacing at the planer or jointer.

Making Joinery

Now it’s time to mill some mortise-and-tenon joinery to attach the stretchers to the legs. Start by laying out the tenons on the ends of the stretcher blanks. Set a marking gauge to 1-1/2″ so you can scribe shoulder lines for the tenons all the way around the ends of the parts. Then install a wide dado blade in your table saw and raise it to 3/4″ high.

I set up a stop on my miter gauge’s long auxiliary fence so all of the shoulder cuts would line up around the workpieces. Make these shoulder cuts on both ends of each stretcher, then remove the stop on the miter gauge and saw away the rest of the material in the tenon areas with more side-by-side passes to complete them.

With the tenons done, use their 2″ x 2″ proportions to lay out a corresponding mortise on each of the legs. Locate these mortises 4-3/4″ up from the bottoms of the legs, centering the mortises on the leg thicknesses. Now step over to your drill press to drill out as much of these mortises as you can. I used a big Forstner bit for this job and set the drilling depth to just a tad deeper than 1-1/2″ so the stretcher tenons would fit fully into them. Drill out the waste in several overlapping plunges.

Tidy up the mortises with a sharp chisel and mallet so their walls are flat and smooth and the corners are square. Now try out the tenons in the leg mortises; they should fit together without needing to “persuade” them into place with a mallet.

You’re nearly ready for some assembly, but first decide if you want to shape the bottom edges of the potting bench’s front apron like I did with a wave pattern. Or leave its bottom edge flat. I drew the swooping shape on a long piece of 3/4″-thick scrap to serve as a template so I would be able to trace the same curvature onto all of the bench’s sculpted parts.

Cut out the template’s shaped edges and sand them smooth. Then trace its profile onto the front apron blank, rough-cut the wavy edge and template-rout it to final form. Ease any sharp edges that are left, and sand smooth all the workpieces you’ve made up to this point.

Assembling the Bench Frame

Tenons can be challenging to cut on really long workpieces. So for ease of assembly, I drilled the inside faces of the four aprons for pocket-screw joints instead. I created two subassemblies for the bench frame by gluing the bottom stretcher tenons into their leg mortises and driving 2-1/2″ exterior pocket screws to attach the short aprons to the upper ends of the legs. I inset the short aprons 1/2″ from the outside faces of the legs. After that came the long, unwieldy front and back aprons. To install those, I first clamped them in place between the subassemblies, setting them back 1/2″ from the faces of the legs as well, then drove their pocket screws home. Working alone as I do, long clamps sure made this step easier!

Next you can install two of the five inner cross braces between the aprons near one end of the bench. I positioned these to straddle the tapered sides of Jonathan’s galvanized steel soil bin (see the Inner Cross Brace Locations Drawing). The bin simply wedges between these cross braces and hangs from them. Position the braces so the rim of the bin will be even with the top edges of the aprons. This way, the bin’s rim will support the removable soil bin lid when that is set into place. Again, I turned to pocket screws to attach these two bin cross braces to the aprons.

Creating Wave-shaped Artisanal Top Slats

The key to recreating the author’s optional wave-shaped details on this potting bench’s top slats, front apron and bottom shelf boils down to basic template routing. A single long template with the sculpted profile on both edges is all you need to trace, cut and rout this shape over and over again. Here’s how it works.

Draw the wave-shaped profile along both edges of an 8-ft. piece of scrap plywood, MDF or solid stock to serve as a template. Cut the template to shape and sand its curved edges smooth.

Trace the template onto the front apron, glued-up top panel (for top slats) and bottom shelf piece shown here. The same template is used for every shaped part.

Use a jigsaw or band saw to cut the wavy profile into each workpiece. Cut about 1/16″ outside of your layout lines. Make sure to have outfeed support in place for band sawing long stock like this.

Pin nail the template to the workpiece so the rough-cut edges extend beyond the edges of the template. If you don’t have a pin nailer, double-sided carpet tape works well, too.

Install a long piloted flush-trim or pattern bit in your router or router table, and adjust the bit so its bearing can roll along the template. Rout away the waste edges.

Once the author had cut and routed her bench’s curvy tabletop slats to shape, she nested them together in their final order to cut a lid for the soil bin. A track saw guided these straight cuts.

Choosing and Building the Benchtop

Now’s the time to choose either my wave-shaped “artisanal” top for your bench or go with straight slats instead. The “straight-slat” approach requires five 5-1/2″-wide boards cut to 92″ lengths. If you want to create a sculpted top, however, start by gluing up enough 1-1/2″-thick stock to create a 32″ x 92″ solid panel.

As shown above, the process for making each wave-shaped, sculpted top slat is pretty easy. Use the long template you made for shaping the front apron’s lower edge to trace a repeating pattern of slats across the panel. Space these layout lines about 1/4″ apart so you’ll have room to cut each of the slats free. You’ll see that the shape of my template enabled me to offset each slat in the layout so the wave pattern appears to “drift” diagonally across the bench’s top. It’s a nice effect!

Once the slat pattern is drawn on your panel, use a jigsaw or band saw (if you have adequate support around it) to saw the slats to rough shape. Cut just outside your layout lines. Then mount your template temporarily to each slat with pin nails or pieces of double-sided tape so you can rout the slat edges flush to the template. Use a long piloted pattern- or flush-trim bit for this task. Clean up all the top slats this way, then break their sharp edges with a 1/8″ roundover bit in a handheld router to keep splinters at bay.

Whether you’ve decided to use straight or sculpted slats, their installation procedure is the same. Flip all the slats upside-down and set them together with their ends and edges aligned. Separate them with some 3/16″-thick scraps. Then get a buddy to help you flip the bench over as I did, and position it carefully on top of the slats, adjusting for an even overhang. My bench’s top overhang was about 1-1/2″ all around. Then set the remaining three cross braces you’ve made into place inside the bench frame aprons, spacing them evenly along its length. These will support the top slats and serve as attachment points for them in the area beyond the soil bin cross braces (refer again to the Inner Cross Brace Locations Drawing). Mark these three “loose” cross braces for pairs of screws at every benchtop slat location.

Installing the Benchtop Slats and Shelf

Once my three braces were laid out for screws, I marked and bored a pair of pocket-screw holes on each end into their top faces. We flipped the bench right-side-up again so I could install the three cross braces flush with the top edges of the aprons using 2-1/2″ pocket screws. And while the bench was off the top slats, I marked them so I could cut a 20-3/4″-wide x 31-1/4″-long lid for the soil bin. When those slat portions are cut free, space them 3/16″ apart and line up their cut edges. Position the two soil bin lid battens on the bottom face of the lid segments and spread them evenly apart. Drive countersunk 2-1/2″ exterior-rated screws through the battens and into the lid slats to fasten the parts together.

With the lid now done, carefully invert the bench frame and set it on the slats again, realigning the parts. Drive 2-1/2″ exterior- rated screws into the cross brace pilot holes you drilled earlier to fasten the top slats in place.

I shaped the edges of the two shelf boards with the wave template to continue that theme there. And since the bench was still upside-down at this point, I drilled countersunk pilot holes through the stretchers so I could fasten the two shelf boards to them from below with 4″ exterior-rated screws.

You can choose to stain and/or finish your bench if you like, but Jonathan and I both agreed that it would look nice with no finish at all. It’s now aged to a lovely silvery gray color.

Download Drawings and Materials List.

The post PROJECT: Cedar Potting Bench appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Rockler offers a 10-piece set of corrugated cardboard templates for this table that will help you trace its top oval and all of the other curved parts. If you only plan to build one table, you could simply trace the templates onto your stock and cut the pieces with your jigsaw or band saw, taking care to stay a little outside those layout lines so you can sand the pieces to final shape.

Another method I’ll recommended, especially if you plan to build multiple tables, is to trace the corrugated shapes onto 1/4″-thick plywood, MDF or hardboard and then cut out and sand them to make a more durable template set that will be ideal for template routing. Template routing is a quicker way to make multiple identical pieces, which adds efficiency to the overall construction process.

Building the Tabletop Assembly

Start your table project by ripping and crosscutting seven blanks for the top slats to rough length, according to the Material List. Use the four top slat templates to trace their curves onto these workpieces. Cut the curves to shape with a band saw or jigsaw, cutting just outside the layout lines. Sand the curves smooth and up to the layout lines.

Now cut blanks for the short and long top aprons to size. Use the kit’s pair of templates to trace the bottom curves onto these blanks. Cut the curves to shape, and sand them smooth. Then, ease just the curved areas of the aprons (not the adjacent flat edges) with a handheld router and 1/8″ roundover bit, a file or a sanding block. Sand the apron faces smooth.

Notice in the Drawings that the top slats are secured to the long top aprons with two cleats that pass through a pair of notches in each apron. Mark these 3/4″-deep, 1-3/8″-long notches along the top edges of the long aprons. Position the notches 2-3/8″ in from the part ends. Then install a wide dado blade in your table saw, and cut the notches in a series of side-by-side passes, backing up the workpieces with a miter gauge equipped with a sacrificial scrap fence to reduce tearout.

With that done, you’re ready to assemble the short and long top aprons into a subassembly using a pair of 2″ counterbored screws at each joint. Arrange the parts so the short aprons overlap the ends of the long aprons.

Rip and crosscut the two cleats to size that will fit into the top apron notches. Ease the sharp ends on one face of each cleat with a handheld router and chamfering bit, a file or on the disc sander. Aim for a 1/4″ x 1/4″ chamfer on these parts.

Go ahead and install the cleats in the notches of the long aprons with a single countersunk 2″ screw at each joint. Orient the cleats so their chamfered faces are down (toward the bottom curved edges of the aprons). The cleats should overhang the outside faces of the aprons by 4-1/4″.

If you’d like to use this table with a patio umbrella, the center top slat requires a 1-3/4″-diameter through hole to fit a typical 1-1/2″-diameter umbrella pole. Mark the centerpoint for this hole on the slat. Then rip and crosscut two blocking pieces to size — one of these will reinforce the top slat from beneath in the hole area, so it also requires a centered hole for the umbrella pole. Install a 1-3/4″ Forstner bit or hole saw in your drill press, and bore a hole through the slat and blocking piece. Back the workpieces up against a clamped fence.

Next, ease the sharp edges and ends of the top slats with a handheld router and 1/8″ roundover bit, a file or a sanding block to reduce splinters. Sand the slats smooth.

Check to make sure the blocking piece fits between the tabletop cleats in the aprons. Then glue the blocking to the bottom face of the center top slat with the umbrella pole holes and part edges carefully aligned. When the glue dries, reinforce this connection with four 1-1/4″ screws driven through the blocking and into the slat. Recess these screws into counterbored pilot holes to maximize the screw penetration.

Install this center top slat on the apron subassembly with the blocking fitting between the cleats. First, invert the apron subassembly so the curves face up, and adjust the top slat so it’s centered on the lengths of the cleats. Then, drill a pair of counterbored pilot holes through each cleat at the slat location, and fasten the cleats to the slat with four 1-1/4″ screws. Again, the counterbores help to ensure maximum thread penetration of these short screws into the slat.

With the center slat attached, you can install the other six top slats on either side of the center slat to form the table’s oval top shape. Align the ends of the slats carefully with one another to create smooth curves, and separate the slats with 1/8″-thick spacers. (Here’s a tip: 2d common nails make good spacers for this purpose.) Attach the cleats to the six slats using four counterbored 1-1/4″ screws per slat, spacing the screws evenly along the cleats.

Now flip the tabletop over so the slats face up, and draw a layout line across the middle three slats, centered over the short aprons. Mark each of these slats on the layout line for a single centered screw that will attach the slats to the short aprons. Drill counterbored pilot holes, and fasten the slats to the aprons with 2″ screws.

Making the Laminated Legs

I made the table’s 1-1/2″-thick legs from two 3/4″ laminations for added stiffness and to take advantage of common lumber thickness (but you could certainly use 8/4 lumber planed to 1-1/2″ thick, if that’s available to you). Start by face-gluing and clamping two 4-1/2″-wide, 37″-long boards together to form a blank that’s wide enough to produce two legs. Prepare two of these blanks. When the glue cures, rip each blank into two 2″-wide legs. Then, swivel your table saw’s miter gauge or your miter saw to 79 degrees (or 11 degrees, depending on the tool) and cut the four legs to length. Their long edges measure 36-1/8″; make sure the angles on the ends of the legs are parallel to each other.

The Drawings will show you that each leg requires a 3/4″-deep x 3-1/2″-wide rabbet at the top to house the table’s top apron assembly. Each leg also receives a 3/4″ x 2-1/2″ notch for the lower apron assembly that supports the shelf. Note that the rabbet shoulder and the notch are parallel with the angled ends of the legs. Lay out these rabbet and lower notch cuts with a bevel gauge, following the Leg Details drawing. It’s also a good idea to mark the legs so you can keep their position and orientation clear.

You’re ready to head to the table saw to cut those joinery details in the legs. Install a wide dado blade, and mill the rabbets and notches in the legs using a series of side-by-side passes. Support the legs from behind with your saw’s miter gauge swiveled 11 degrees off of square and equipped with a long scrap fence. Clamp a stop block to the scrap fence to register the rabbet shoulders and notch locations accurately. Work carefully when making these cuts to be sure your miter gauge is angled correctly, depending upon which leg you’re cutting: it will be swiveled left for two legs and right for the other two; they are mirror opposites.

Check to make sure the top and bottom aprons fit the rabbets and notches you’ve just cut before moving on from the table saw. If they do, shape the bottom sharp corners of the legs into 1/4″ curves to make them less likely to splinter when the table is dragged over rough surfaces. Then ease the legs’ long edges with a handheld router and 1/8″ roundover bit, a file or a sanding block. Sand the legs smooth.

Assembling the Lower Framework

Building the shelf’s apron assembly follows the same process as the one for the tabletop: rip and crosscut blanks for the short and long lower aprons, draw their curved profiles using the corrugated templates and cut them to shape. Ease their curved edges and assemble the apron framework with pairs of counterbored 2″ screws at each overlapping corner joint.

Invert the tabletop assembly on your workbench in order to clamp the legs in position against the long aprons. Align the outer edge of each leg so it intersects the bottom outside corner (curved edge) of the short aprons. Doing this will cause the opposite edge of the short aprons (directly beneath the tabletop slats) to project beyond the legs by 3/4″.

Now set the shelf apron subassembly into place in the leg notches. Adjust the legs so they intersect the bottom outside corners of the short shelf aprons in the same fashion as the top aprons do. Clamp the legs to the long shelf aprons to hold them in place.

Grab your pencil so you can mark the legs for a single centered carriage bolt at each joint that will secure the rabbet tongues and notched areas of the legs to the upper and lower apron subassemblies. Bore a 5/16″-diameter through hole at these eight layout marks. Fasten the leg/apron joints together with stainless or galvanized 5/16″ x 2″ carriage bolts, washers and locknuts.

It’s now time to cut three slats for the shelf and mark their curved ends with the corrugated templates. Cut the slat ends to shape, ease their sharp edges and sand the slats smooth. When that’s done, mark centerpoints on both the longest shelf slat and the second blocking piece you cut initially for the umbrella pole holes. Bore these holes through the workpieces at the drill press. Glue and screw the blocking to the bottom face of the center slat with the umbrella pole holes carefully aligned.

Stand the table right-side up, and set the shelf slats in place on the lower apron assembly. Align the curves of the outer two shelf slats with the inside edges of the legs. Adjust the middle slat evenly between the outer slats to form 1/8″ gaps between them and so the end curves line up well. Clamp the slats to the aprons, and fasten them with a single counterbored 2″ screw driven into the aprons at each joint location.

Wrapping Up with Wood Plugs and Finish

I cut and installed tapered wood plugs to hide the screwheads at the corner apron joints and where the screwheads are visible on the top and shelf slats from above. (It’s not necessary to fill the counterbores in the tabletop cleats, which aren’t visible when the table is standing upright.) Apply your choice of exterior stain, paint or other wood finish to complete the table. When it dries, it’s time to find that patio umbrella!

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

Hard-to-Find Hardware:

Table

Bar Height Patio Table Templates (1) #61795
Bar Height Table Hardware Pack (1) #63918

Chairs

Bar Height Adirondack Chair Plan, Templates (1) #56771
Bar Height Adirondack Chair Hardware Pack (1 chair) #57269

The post PROJECT: Bar Height Adirondack Table appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

A bamboo fly rod is made of six strips of bamboo glued together to form a hexagon. The strips are triangular in cross-section, and since the rod tapers from handle to tip, the triangular strips taper, too — the triangle is bigger at one end of the strip than the other.

All of this is done in three stages: First, you rough out a rod blank, splitting the bamboo stem to stern, kiln-drying it, and then planing it into long triangular strips — a set of six strips for each section of the rod. In the second stage, you taper the triangular strips with a block plane and a special metal form. Then you apply glue to the pieces and clamp them together by wrapping them tightly with thread.

On a good day, it’s a piece of cake. On a bad day, it’s worse than getting skunked on the stream. Far worse. The final stage is applying the finish and attaching the hardware. I like to think of the stages as lumberjack, cabinetmaker and finisher.

Stage One: Lumberjack

This stage begins with a piece of Tonkin cane, the only cane used in rod-making, because its long, dense fibers make for a powerful rod. In the entire world, Tonkin cane grows in a single 30-square mile patch of China.

Technically, bamboo is a grass, and a stick is called a culm. The easiest and fastest way to get the strips you need is to split the culm the way Windsor chair-makers rive a chair back from a log, and for the same reason. Splitting bamboo gives you a piece with long parallel strands of grain. Rod-makers often make their own splitters that they drive into the end of the culm. Mine are chisels with edges that are ground to a rounded point. As the pieces get smaller, I hold the end of the chisel on the bench with one hand, and feed the bamboo into it with the other. The goal: six strips plus whatever else you can get from the bottom five feet of the culm. This will be the butt section. The tip comes from the upper five feet of the culm, and because rods traditionally have an extra tip, you’ll want to split it into 12 pieces.

At this point, a couple of minor adjustments are required. A stick of bamboo is divided into shorter sections by a series of bumps, called nodes. You need to get rid of them and deal with the bends that typically occur around them. Fortunately, bamboo bends when heated. Holding the node directly over a heat gun until the wood is almost too hot to handle makes the heated section bend like warm plastic. Once I’ve heated it, I can flatten the node completely (or almost so) by clamping it in a vise with the outside face against a jaw. I count to 10 as I clamp the edges between the jaws to straighten out the bends. If any of the nodal bumps remain, they’re sanded out by hand with 240 grit paper and a hard rubber sanding block.

Before shaping each piece into a triangle, there are two more steps. The first is to get each piece down to a manageable width. Traditionally this is done with a hand plane — it may be a grass, but bamboo works like wood. Tradition has its place, but this isn’t really the time for it. I rip the strips to width on the table saw (use lots of featherboards), and then I plane them into triangles on a jig in the planer. The planer jig is a simple oak auxiliary table with 60˚ grooves routed into it. Battens on the bottom fit snugly against the front and back of the planer bed to hold the jig in place. Each groove is slightly shallower than its neighbor — the largest is about 3/8″ deep and the smallest is about 1/16″ deep. I feed all the strips into the first groove, flip them edge for edge, and then feed them into the next shallower groove. I slowly work my way down the table until I’ve planed the strips to the exact size required by the rod.

Like any piece of lumber, your strips of bamboo need to be kiln-dried. This not only drives out water that might haunt you down the road, but it also tempers the bamboo, turning what would otherwise be a soft rod into one with backbone. It doesn’t take long — about 10 minutes at 350 degrees for the butts, and slightly less for the tips. I use a heat gun, combined with a couple of heat ducts — one inside the other — with lots of insulation around the outer pipe.

The heat gun shoots heat down the outside duct; it rises into the inner duct at an even temperature. I use two meat thermometers, one at the top and one at the bottom of the ducts, to monitor the temperature.

A Custom-Built Rod-maker’s Plane

At some point early in your rod building, the edge of your plane will dig into the planing forms you’ve just spent a small fortune to buy. Everyone does it, and no one likes it. But special rod-maker’s planes give you the control you need to avoid gouging. They have a groove milled down the middle, creating two outside “rails” that glide along the form. The groove travels over the bamboo, and the blade extends just far enough to do its work without cutting into the planing form.

The only rod-maker’s plane on the market is a beautiful piece of work, but you’ll pay for it. Instead, I made my own by routing a groove along the sole of an old block plane first, then on a good one I currently use for this task. I used a 5/8″ straight bit in my router table and set the distance between the bit and rail to 1/2″ — the width of a rail. Raise the router bit to make a cut about .001″ deep. When everything is right, take the blade out of the plane and run the plane across the spinning bit, holding it tight against the fence. Turn it around, and make a pass with the other side of the plane against the fence. Raise the bit and repeat until the groove is .003″ deep.

Clamping Up: Rod-maker Style

The strips that make up a fly rod aren’t going to clamp together with even the best clamps, so rod-makers clamp them with a shop-made jig (designed by Everett Garrison) that binds the pieces together in taut, spiraling wraps of upholstery thread. Glue is applied first, using a toothbrush to spread it over all six strips, which are lined up side-by-side on top of a piece of masking tape. You roll the pieces together and then run them through the binder. A drive belt made of kite line turns the rod and moves it forward as upholstery thread, fed from above, wraps tightly around the rod.

The fishing weights hanging from the drive belt determine the pressure with which the string is applied. On a tip as tiny as this one, as I discovered, the weight of anything more than the pulley is enough to snap the rod until you get a good 10″ from the tip. At that point, I add a 12-ounce weight. I use a 16-ounce weight on the butt section.

Once the rod is wrapped, you remove any twists, and then roll it under a board, a J-roller or both, to straighten it. I set it under weights on the planing form to keep it aligned while the glue cures. There will still be minor twists and bends when the glue dries, but you straighten them out with with gentle heat from the heat gun.

Stage Two: Cabinetmaker

Here, tradition rules, and I am fine with it. You are working with a finely tuned plane, a razor-sharp blade and a tapering jig that adjusts to thousandths of an inch. I enjoy it the way I enjoy fly casting — nothing matters but what you’re doing, and what you’re doing is about as good as it gets.

The fact is that while there is no perfect taper for a rod, there are thousands of bad ones. I chose a time-tested taper developed by Everett Garrison. Garrison made some 700 rods from 1927 until his death in 1975, and they are considered some of the finest ever made. I copied the 7-ft. rod he used on the last day he went fishing. Some of his other tapers, as well as his directions for building, can be found in his book A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, coauthored with Hoagy Carmichael. Understanding how rod-making works means understanding how the tapering jig works. The tapering jig, also called a planing form, is made of two bars of steel 5 ft. long. The edges that face each other are chamfered and form a V-groove when the bars are put together. At one end of the jig, the chamfers form a deep valley; at the other end, they form a shallow valley. In between, the chamfer forms a valley that slopes evenly between the two ends. The bamboo sits proud of the jig, and you plane it until the plane is riding on the jig. When it is, the bamboo is the same shape as the valley — wide at one end, narrow at the other. Because of the hundreds of different rod tapers, you can adjust the depth of the valley every five inches using a pair of bolts. One bolt pushes the metal bars farther apart, the other pulls them together.

Setting the forms to the proper taper requires two tools from the machinist’s trade — the dial caliper and a depth indicator with a pointed tip. Initially, you set the forms with a depth gauge and, after planing a test strip, you check the setting’s accuracy with the dial caliper.

Gluing the Rod Together

When the strips have been planed to final dimension, it’s time to glue them together. Initially, I used polyurethane glue. It is widely available, affordable and waterproof. It fills gaps, has a working time of 20 to 30 minutes and dries the same color as bamboo. Unfortunately, 20 to 30 minutes isn’t a lot of time when you’re trying to clamp up six pieces of bamboo only slightly thicker than the butt end of a leader. The pieces slipped, slid and twisted as I worked, and to make a long story short, the polyurethane rods were the ones that became tomato stakes. I use industrial epoxy now, which is surprisingly friendly — it dries slowly, so if I have a problem I have hours to solve it.

Stage Three: Finisher

All that remains is putting the ferrules, handle, reel seat and line guides on. Ferrules first: The inside diameter of the ferrule is less than the outside diameter of the rod, so you file down the ends as the blank turns on the lathe. You’ll need a three- or four- jawed chuck and a support to keep the far end of the blank from whipping around. I made my support by bolting a piece of plywood to a table saw outfeed stand. Drill a hole in the plywood, line it with something soft (like a cork with a hole drilled in it), and then feed the rod through the hole to steady it. The handle and reel seat get glued on next — I suggest ready-made ones for your first rods; learn to make your own later.

Finishing, as a friend observed, is half science and half snake oil. Garrison hit upon the method most rod-makers use today. He dipped the rod, narrow end down, into an upright pipe filled with varnish, and pulled it out with a motor running at 1 rpm. This requires a pretty tall ceiling. I don’t have one, so I began to think about the last days of each semester in my college woodworking courses, when the shop smelled of Waterlox and Watco. It was the dustiest place on the planet, and yet because we were using oil-based finishes that we wiped off, we could still get blemish-free finishes. So far, I’ve finished my rods with Birchwood Casey® TRU-OIL® Gun Stock Finish, a pure tung oil that is also traditional rod finish. I apply it with a rag, rub it for about five minutes and set it aside to dry. If there are any imperfections, I sand them out gently with 1,000-grit paper. After three or four coats, the finish rivals the smoothness of varnish.

If you start in the fall, and make no tomato stakes or start no fires, it will probably be early January by the time you apply the several coats of varnish that hold the silk thread in place. Around here, it will be a couple more weeks before the blue-winged olive hatch. See you on the stream.

The post Project: Bamboo Fly Rod appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Forming Back Legs

To get this project underway, start by tracing Rockler’s seven patterns (or plotting points from the gridded drawings) onto 1/4″ MDF or plywood and carefully cutting them out to create full-size, durable templates. Sand their edges smooth.

Next, glue up seven double-thick blanks for the front and back legs, arms and a spare “test” arm from 1-1/2″-thick stock. Blanks measuring 6″ x 39-1/2″ work well for the back legs; start with 4-1/4″-wide x 24″-long blanks for the arms. When the glue dries, plane the seven blanks down to 2-3/4″ thick.

Use your rigid templates to trace the leg and arm shapes onto their blanks. When laying out the arms, make sure the angled back end forms a 16° angle with the bottom flat edge of the blanks and the “flat” behind the front ball end of the arm is parallel to the blank’s bottom edge. For now, cut out just the back legs at the band saw, sawing about 1/16″ outside the layout lines.

The next step will involve template routing, but these leg and arm workpieces are thicker than standard flush trim or pattern bits can reach in a single pass. To solve the problem, I used Rockler’s 1-1/2″ Double Bearing Shear Flush Trim Bit (item 27867) for this operation in two configurations — with the end bearing removed as a “pattern” bit, then with the end bearing installed as a flush-trim bit. But you could use long, single bearing flush trim and pattern bits instead, if you own those bits already.

Either way, mount your back leg template to one of the back leg blanks with double-sided tape. Install a long piloted pattern bit in your router table and, with the workpiece oriented so the template is facing down, trim around the leg to match the template using the bit’s full cutting length. Feed the leg workpieces slowly along the bit to prevent chipping and tearout, especially when the bit must cut against the grain.

Now switch to a long piloted flush trim bit and raise it until the bit’s bearing will ride along the routed portion of the leg from the first routing pass. Flip the leg blank over (template-side up) and remove the rest of the waste to complete this template-routing step. (Editor’s Note: Bits with a shear cutting angle, such as the double bearing flush-trim bit shown here, are preferable to bits with cutters that are in line with the bit’s axis, because the shear angle cuts more cleanly against the grain.)

Template-rout the other back leg.

Lay out the arm, side rail and stretcher mortises on the front edges of each back leg, using Rockler’s leg pattern or the gridded drawing as a guide. All three mortises are 3/4″ wide, but the arm mortise is 2-1/4″ long, the side rail mortise is 2″ long and the stretcher mortise is 1-1/2″ long. Center these mortises on the leg thicknesses. Locate the stretcher mortise 3-3/4″ up from the bottom end and the side rail mortise 13-3/4″ up from the bottom. Position the arm mortise 6-3/4″ up from the inside corner where the leg transitions to a backrest.

Use a 3/4″-dia. Forstner bit to drill out the bulk of the waste from the mortises. All three are 1-1/2″ deep. Due to the angled shape of these parts, you’ll probably need to use a tall spacer block or fabricate a raised platform on the drill press table to lift the leg high enough to clear the table. That way you can reposition the leg to suit its bent shape as well as drill these mortises squarely into the leg faces. Back up the spacer block and leg blank with a fence clamped to the drill press table to ensure that the drilled holes remain aligned and centered on the workpiece thicknesses. Then clean up and square each mortise with a sharp chisel.

Cutting Leg, Arm Tenons

Set the back legs aside for now so you can miter-cut the back ends of the arm blanks and the “test” arm to 16°, which forms the ends of the arms’ angled tenons. Then gather up the arm and front leg blanks and head to the table saw to mill their 3/4″-thick, 1-1/2″-long tenons. Install a wide dado blade and raise it to just shy of 1″. Set the rip fence 1-1/2″ from the far side of the dado blade, and cut the long cheeks and shoulders of the front leg tenons. Back up these cuts with a miter gauge equipped with a long scrap fence.

Repeat the process for cutting the long cheeks and shoulders for the back angled tenons of the arms, but this time, swivel the miter gauge to 74° to support the arm blanks from behind; the angled ends of the arm blanks should be positioned flush against the rip fence, which will establish each shoulder cut. Once that cut is made, remove the rest of the waste in several side-by-side passes, sliding the arm blanks farther away from the rip fence for each pass. You’ll need to flip the arm blank over and swivel the miter gauge to 74° in the other direction to make these shoulder cuts on the opposite faces of the arm blanks. Be sure to practice this setup on the “test” arm blank before milling the actual arms.

Now complete the front leg and arm tenons by laying out and sawing their short shoulders and cheeks, bringing the tenons to an overall width of 2-1/4″.

Go ahead and rough-cut the front legs to shape at the band saw. Cut the bottom (mortised) edge of the arms to rough shape, too, but leave the top edges of the arm blanks flat for now.

Template-rout the front legs to final shape, using the same two router bit method as you did for the back legs. When those are done, template-rout the bottom “cut” edges of the arms as well.

Mark the back edges of the front legs for the side rail and stretcher mortises. Bore these mortises 1-1/2″ deep at the drill press, and chisel them flat and square. Don’t drill the front leg mortises in the arms just yet, however — those will get marked and machined later, when the bench’s side assemblies are ready to be fitted together.

We also need to mark the inside faces of the front and back legs for the front rail, crest rail and back rail mortises. Here is when the front and back legs become left and right specific, so choose which will be which. All three mortises are 3/4″ wide. The back rail mortises are 2-7/8″ long; locate them 1-1/8″ in from the front lower edge of each back leg and 14-5/8″ up from its bottom end. The mortises for the crest rail are 2-1/2″ long; they begin 17-1/2″ up from the point at which the back edge of the back leg transitions from a leg to a backrest. Position them 1″ in from the back edge of the leg. The front rail mortises are 3-1/2″ long; locate them 11″ up from the bottom of the front legs and centered on their width. Bore these mortises 1-1/2″ deep, and chisel them flat and square.

Building Side Assemblies

Prepare enough 1-3/8″-thick stock to make blanks for the side and middle rails, stretchers, crest rail, back rail and front rail. Gather the side rails and stretchers, and set the other blanks aside for the time being.

Back at the table saw, mill 3/4″-thick, 1-1/2″-long tenons on the ends of the side rails and stretchers. Then reset the blade to 1/4″ high to cut the short end shoulders and cheeks on the stretchers; the final width of these tenons is 1-1/2″. Keep this blade height setting for cutting the short shoulders on the front tenons of the side rails and the bottom shoulder of their back tenons. But you’ll need to raise the blade to 3/8″ for cutting the top shoulder of these back tenons because they’re offset on the rails. The final width of the back tenons on the side rails is 2″, whereas their front tenons are 2-1/8″ wide.

Next, form two bench side assemblies by dry fitting a side rail and stretcher between a back and front leg. Set the arms atop the front legs and against the back legs, and carefully mark where the front leg tenon intersects the bottom, flat edge of the arm. Remove the arms, and lay out these 3/4″-thick, 2-1/4″-wide mortises. Drill them 1-1/2″ deep, and chisel them smooth and square. Reinstall the arms on their side assemblies to be sure the arms and front legs fit together correctly. Once you disassemble these parts, cut the top profiles of the arms to rough shape and template-rout them to completion.

Use your side rail template to trace its top profiled edge onto the side rail blanks. Band-saw these edges to rough shape and template-rout them to match. Then ease the four long edges of the stretchers and the bottom two flat edges of the side rails with a 1/4″-radius roundover bit to prevent future splinters.

At this point, you’re ready to sand the legs, arms, stretchers and side rails smooth then glue and clamp the side assemblies together using Titebond III or other waterproof wood glue. When the bench side assemblies come out of the clamps, plane, scrape or sand any mismatched joints flush. Mark the outside faces of the mortise-and-tenon joints for a single counterbored #8 x 2″ screw that will pin them together permanently. Position these screws so they’re centered on the width of the tenons and 5/8″ back from intersection of the parts. Drill counterbored pilot holes and drive the screws into them. Fill these counterbores with tapered wood plugs made from scraps of the project wood.

In order to prevent the bottom ends of the legs from chipping or splintering when the bench is dragged around on hard surfaces, it’s a good idea to chamfer their bottom ends. Do this with a trim router and chamfering bit, set to 1/4″ deep. Or form these chamfers with a sanding block, plane or file. Then use a 1/4″ roundover bit to ease the remaining sharp edges of the side assemblies. Sand the profiles into smooth transitions where they intersect at inside corners.

Making Backrest Pieces

With the side assemblies now complete, rip and crosscut a blank for the crest rail from 1-3/8″ stock. Since the length and weight of this long rail would make it difficult to maneuver over a table saw for cutting tenons on its ends, use an edge guide or a jig and your router to mill the tenons this way instead.

The scrap-made jig I used simply wraps around the workpiece like a collar to align the shoulders of the tenon all the way around. A short piloted mortising bit, run against the edges of the jig, completes the cuts. Rout 3/4″-thick, 1-1/2″-long tenons across both ends of the crest rail blank, removing the material in a series of deepening passes.

Next, trace your curved crest rail template onto the ends of the blank, and carefully bandsaw the bottom (slatted) edge of the rail to shape. Use your rigid crest rail template, if needed, to perfect these curves by template routing. Once that’s done, lay out the 1/2″-wide x 2-3/8″-long back slat mortises along the shaped edge of the crest rail. Mark the middle 2″ slat space first, then lay out the other 12 mortises 2″ apart. Center the mortises on the crest rail’s thickness.

Chuck a 1/2″ Forstner bit in your drill press or a 1/2″ hollow chisel in your mortiser to cut these back slat mortises 9/16″ deep (the outermost two mortises will be deeper to accommodate the crest rail curves; make their depth match the other ten shallower mortises). Square their ends and clean up their walls, if needed, so the slats will fit easily inside.

Complete the crest rail’s shape by rough-cutting and template-routing its top, curved edge. Mark the short end cheeks and shoulders on the tenons, then cut them with a hand saw to bring the tenons to their final 2-1/2″ width.

Make up a blank for the lower back rail next, and raise 3/4″-thick x 2-7/8″- wide x 1-1/2″-long tenons on its ends. The bottom ends of the back rail tenons will also need to be notched to fit around the top ends of the side rail tenons. Mark and cut these 1/2″-wide, 1″-long notched areas with a hand saw.

Refine the fit of the crest and back rail tenons as needed by hand planing until they fit snugly into their mortises in the back legs.

Set the crest and back rails together with their ends aligned so you can transfer the crest rail mortise locations onto what will be the top edge of the back rail. This ensures that the slat mortises will line up well when the backrest is assembled.

Notice in the Drawings that the back slats follow the angle of the bench’s backrest (16°), but the back rail doesn’t — it’s parallel with the lower portion of the legs. In order to mill the angled slat mortises that the back rail requires, first make an angled block for your drill press or mortising machine to hold the stock at a 16° angle to the bit. Affix the block to the fence of your drill press or mortiser with its angled face tilting backward. Adjust the fence to center the rail under the bit, and orient the rail with its front face against the angled block. Set the bit or chisel’s cutting depth to 9/16″, then mill the 12 slat mortises, making sure the rail remains flush against the angled block.

Now cut the back slats to size from 1/2″-thick stock, and test their fit in the crest and back rails by dry assembling the backrest. Check to see if the backrest tenons fit into the four mortises of the back legs. You may need to slightly shorten the slat length to accomplish this. I chamfered the ends of my slats to prepare them for easier insertion during final backrest assembly.

While the backrest is still apart, ease the long edges of its rails with 1/4″-radius roundovers, then sand the rails and slats up to 180 grit. Break the long sharp edges of the slats too.

Assembling the Framework

Create the front rail using the same tenoning and template-routing methods you used to form the crest rail. Make sure that its overall length matches the back and crest rail lengths. Then raise 3/4″-thick x 1-1/2″-long x 3-1/2″-wide tenons on its ends. The tops of these tenons will need to be notched to fit around the bottom ends of the side rail tenons, so mark and saw these notches now. Test the fit of the front rail tenons in their mortises in the front legs; plane them if needed to achieve a good slip fit.

Now mill a 3/4″-wide, 2-1/8″-long mortise into the back face of the front rail, centered on its length and located 1/4″ down from the top edge. Make this mortise just 1/4″ deep. Square up its ends.

Raise a tenon on the front end of the middle rail to fit the mortise you just made in the front rail. However, the back end of the middle rail has no tenon; instead, it will be notched to fit around the bottom edge of the back rail. Use your template to mark, cut and shape the middle rail’s top, curved edge to match the top edges of the side rails.

With that done, it’s time to complete the full bench framework. Reassemble the crest and back rails with the slats in between, and clamp this assembly together. Dry fit the bench sides onto the backrest and front rail, and install some long clamps to hold the bench together. Tack the crest and back rails to the slats with 1″-long, 18-gauge brads driven in from behind. Then pull the big components apart one last time, spread glue into the leg mortises and onto the rail tenons and clamp up the bench frame.

While these joints dry, fit the middle rail onto the front rail so you can mark the notch at its back end where it needs to wrap around the back rail. Cut the notch 1-1/2″ deep to form a tongue on its bottom back end, and test the middle rail’s fit on the bench. Now drill a centered hole through the tongue for a 1/4″ x 2-1/2″ lag or washerhead screw, extending this pilot hole up into the back rail as well. Install the middle rail with glue in the mortise-and-tenon joint, and drive the screw to secure the tongue to the back rail. Drive a counterbored 3″ deck screw through the front rail and into the front end of the middle rail to reinforce this joint further.

Grab a handful of 2″ exterior screws so you can cross-pin all the remaining mortise-and-tenon joints, just as you did for the side assemblies.

Finishing Up

With the bench’s framework completed, fill all the remaining screw counterbores with tapered wood plugs, saw them flush and sand the plug areas smooth. Now you’re ready to add the final components — seat slats! Rip and crosscut the six slats to size. Test their fit on the bench seat with 7/16″- dia. dowels used as spacers in between (the shorter slat goes in front). If the slats fit well, remove them so you can mark and drill a single counterbored pilot hole near the ends of each of the five long slats, centering these screw holes over the side rails. Mark and drill screw holes for the middle rail as well. Bore four counterbored pilot holes for screws along the length of the front slat, positioning them to avoid the middle rail’s front screw. File or sand the sharp corners of the slats round, then ease their top edges and ends with a 1/4″ roundover bit. Sand the slats smooth.

Now is a good time to apply finish to the bench and slats before installing them, while their surfaces are still easy to reach. I kept things simple by applying two coats of oil-based deck stain.

When the finish dries, set the slats in place, adjusting for an even overhang on the side rails. Extend their screw pilot holes down into the side, middle and front rails, and attach the slats with #8 x 2″ exterior screws. Fill their counterbores with plugs, and trim them flush.

Touch up the finish on the slats to complete your bench. If possible, set it beneath a shade tree or in another spot out of direct sunlight, to help preserve the stain’s color as long as possible. Now have a seat and enjoy the view!

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

Hard-to-Find Hardware:

English Garden Bench Template with Plan (1) #61885
Rockler 1-1/2″ Double Bearing Shear Flush Trim Bit (1) #27867

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Here’s a great opportunity to have a friend come over and help out, or maybe invite a Scout group to your shop to have a make-and-take meeting! (Our cutting diagram will show you how to yield two of these projects from one 4×8 sheet of 3/4″ plywood, if you’re so inclined.) Feel free to redesign the window shapes and sizes to your liking. Personalize the title of the book, too. Be creative, and most of all, have fun!

Cutting the Pieces to Shape

Cut blanks for the plywood pieces (roof panels, front, back, sides and floor) on your table saw. Prepare a 3/4″-thick blank of wood or plywood for the roof’s “book spine,” too. If you look closely, I used medium-density overlay (MDO) plywood for these main parts; it has a laminated wood core but a smooth, weatherproof resin facing that takes paint really well. Signmakers love it. You can use ordinary exterior-rated plywood instead if you can’t get a sheet of MDO.

Now, lay out the 32° roof angles on the front and back pieces. Then use a sliding bevel gauge, set to this angle, to adjust your miter gauge for cutting the roof angles to shape on the table saw.

Grab one of these roof cutoff pieces to use as a guide for tilting your table saw blade to bevel the top ends of the side pieces; they need to fit flush with the roof panels when those are installed.

While the table saw blade is still tilted to this angle, it’s also the angle you need for the edges of the roof peak/book spine. So, bevel rip one of its edges. Then, with the front and back pieces standing up, hold one roof panel and the spine in place to check their fit. Mark the spine to width, and bevel rip its second edge. Take your time and creep up on the final size to form tight roof joints.

Next, cut a piece of 1/2″-thick lumber to the right widths and lengths to make the various window and door trim parts With this done, I switched blades and cut three pieces of 1/8″-thick acrylic for the larger two windows and the door pane at my table saw. Use a triple-chip tooth blade, if you have one, that will cut it safely. Or, you can buy a simple tool at hardware stores and home centers to score and snap the pieces to shape. I cut out the little round acrylic window using a coping saw with a fine-tooth blade.

Forming the Window Openings

Pre-drill counterbored pilot holes for #8 screws where the sides will attach to the front and back and where all four of these panels will attach to the bottom. Using a stop collar on your bit will ensure that all the counterbores will end up being the same depth.

The acrylic window panels can now become templates for tracing their openings on the side and front panels. Use a speed or combination square to help get each window aligned properly and parallel to the bottom edges of the parts.

Next, go ahead and cut out the window openings. Drill a hole large enough for your jigsaw blade in at least one corner of each opening for making these interior cutouts. When those are done, lay out the larger 11″ x 15″ shape for the door’s “core” piece, and remove that as well — do this carefully, because this piece will be re-used. Cut out the 2-1/22″-round window opening with a jigsaw, Forstner bit or a hole saw.

Now glue and nail the top, bottom and side pieces of the door frame to the core piece. The goal here is to center the core on these wider frame sections so the inside edges of the frame form a rabbet for installing the acrylic pane.

The outer rabbet of the door frame will overlap the door opening and create a weather seal there. When that’s done, set the door in place on the front panel, and glue and nail the trim pieces around the door opening, adjusting them so the door fits with a little gap all around.

Assembling the Building

Let’s assemble the big parts! Attach the front and back panels to the sides with glue and 1-1/2″ screws. Drive more screws along the bottom edges of all four panels into the bottom to secure it. Fill the screw counterbores with wood plugs, and trim them flush.

Next, we can cover up the sawn edges of the openings in the library by attaching the window and door trim. Miter cut the little trim pieces for the round window’s hexagonal frame (60° angles for each cut) and glue it together. A rubber band can make a handy clamp to hold these little pieces in place. While that frame dries, position the four parts of each window’s trim so it overlaps the cutouts and provides surfaces along the back edges to install the windows. Pin nails and glue provide enough holding power for this trim.

Once that’s done, go ahead and attach the window and door panes to the trim and door framework with beads of clear silicone caulk spread along the rabbets.

Those corner joints on the building need to have their exposed plywood edges covered so the plys and little voids don’t show up under paint. I covered the edges with exterior wood putty. Sand the dried putty smooth.

Creating the Book Roof

At this point, we can close up the building by installing the upside-down book roof. Start by rounding over the top edges and what will be the bottom corners of the roof panels with a router, hand plane or sander to make them look more like book covers. Mark the roof pieces with centerlines where they’ll overlap the front, back and sides of the building. Soften the top edges of the roof peak with a hand plane or sanding block to simulate a book spine; make sure these curves stop where the peak will intersect the roof panels. Use 1-1/2″ brad nails and glue to install the roof panels and peak on the building.

Complete the look of the book by laying out and cutting four pieces of curved fretwork that will form the edges of its open pages. Use the gridded drawing as a guide, then cut these pieces to shape with a band saw or jigsaw.

Time to Paint!

Putty and sand any remaining nail holes or defects, and you’re ready to paint your library before doing the last bits of final assembly.

I chose red for the main structure, and when that paint dried, I masked off and painted the trimwork white as well as the library’s interior. Paint the book covers and spine a darker color. But, before you do that, think about whether you want to put a title on the front and back covers of the book. I decided to paint the title sections of the book red to contrast with the roof color, then I used HotStamp letters in my woodburning tool to burn the words into the cover. I also titled the library with HotStamps. (If you aren’t familiar with these stamps, they’re made of brass and thread onto a woodburning tool. Just heat them up to “brand” one letter at a time.) When that’s done, touch up the paint around your lettering or masked-off areas as needed.

I painted the fretwork pieces white, then used my woodburner again to add a series of thin lines to them that look like page edges. A permanent marker would work well for this detailing, too. Attach the fretwork by boring pairs of countersunk screw holes through them and fastening them to the bottom faces of the roof panels. Inset the fretwork back 1/2″ or so from the front and back edges of the roof to add more realism.

Final Assembly Details

All that’s left to do on the library itself is to hang the door. I did that with a pair of 2-1/2″ utility hinges. Pre-drill pilot holes for the hinge screws in the edges of the door frame and the surrounding door trim to prevent splitting the wood. I used a self-centering bit to position these holes accurately. Make sure to mount the hinges straight so the door won’t bind when it swings.

Add a magnetic catch behind the door. Make a little latch out of an off-cut piece and attach it to the door trim with a screw that’s just loose enough in its mounting hole so the latch can swivel around to make sure the library door stays closed when visitors aren’t browsing!

Mounting the Post and Project

The post for the lending library is very easy to make! Use either a table saw or a miter saw to cut two 10-1/2″-long pieces of a cedar or treated 4×4 to form two braces. Miter cut their ends to 45°. I used a 5-ft. length of 4×4 for a center post. Attach the braces to the post with long, countersunk deck screws so their top angles are flush with the top of the post. Then glue and screw a 5″-wide, 20″-long piece of 3/4″ stock to the tops of the post and braces to create a mounting platform for the library.

Dig a hole in the ground where you’ll locate your library. Depending on the length of your post, make the hole deep enough so the top of the platform will be about 3 ft. high. At this height, readers both tall and small will be able to reach the books. Set the post and backfill around it with dirt. Firmly tamp and pack down the backfill.

Install the building on the post by driving 1-1/4″-long screws through the bottom and into the post and braces. Then stand back and admire: your Little Lending Library is open for business!

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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