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This trestle bench was a piece I built at a local college woodworking course. The course was four full days so I took the time off work and spent the entire week working on this bench. That week has got me wondering if I can somehow take a few months off and get to the inside passage school of woodworking. I absolutely loved getting up every morning knowing I had another full day of woodworking and learning ahead of me.

The basic form of the bench follows the instructor's plan, we had the option of going with a wedged mortise or a wedged through dovetail, I chose the wedged dovetail. I took this course specifically to get instruction and practice on the through joinery. I spent the better part of one of the days working the mortises with a chisel. These are my first through mortises and I am quite happy with how they turned out.

After the four days was up, I still hadn't decided on the final shaping. So I brought it home, created a sketchup model of it and spent some time playing with design options. I finally decided on what you see here, slight taper to the seat ends, quarter circle cut outs on the seats and the gables, I also added the 3/16" bead detail to the trestle (I had to buy a plunge beading router bit for that). Finally I decided to angle the trestle ends as well as rounding over the edges of it and the wedges.
As I started to sand the bench for finishing, I noticed that two ends of the seats were checking…I felt sick. Conveniently there was a Woodwhisperer guild meeting a couple days later, so I threw the question out at the meeting and was given a bunch of suggestions on how to deal with it. I ended up going with a bit of CA glue and sawdust, the cracks hardly show and I think they've stopped spreading. A big thanks to Marc and the rest of the guys online that night!

The bench is made of 8/4 Big Leaf Maple with Jatoba for the wedges, seat anchors and the four "pins" used to keep the seat slats aligned. For finishing this piece I planed or scraped all the flat surfaces and went straight to 220 grit for the final sanding. That seemed faster than going through 3 grits of sandpaper, and I certainly enjoyed it more. Finished with three coats of danish oil and two coats of water based poly. The bench is four feet long and about 16 inches tall.

thanks for looking…Devin.

Gallery

Comments

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That is one beutiful bench

I also loved my 6 month full time course at wood school and wish i could spend more time going

Thanks for showing

Hooky
 

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Devin,
Nice job. That is a beautiful bench. Looks comfortable too!
 

· In Loving Memory
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Nice job especially with your simple details…very well done!!
 

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Fantastic work! Not overly detailed.

You have been able to take a woodworking class AND you have a woodworking guild to attend. I am jealous!! There is not anything woodworking related in my area!
 

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Nice clean bench Devin nice work
 

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363 Posts
Nice shape and design. The wedges make the piece stand out.
 

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this is very nice…I love the extra personal touches you went with on this bench…and to build this while learning so much is even better…
 

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328 Posts
I built a similar bench a few years ago for my woodworking lvl 3 course at camosun. sandra does have a nice design she encourages everyone to use.
i'm leaving for inside passage school in nine days, so it is kinda funny that our woodworking paths have been so similar. we should probably take the time to visit each others shops someday.
nice project.
 

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That is a really nice bench. Thanks for sharing, and keep up the good work.
 

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Thanks for the comments everyone, with the move and building the new shop it had been way too long since I made some sawdust, feels great to be back at it.
James, I am lucky to have courses and a guild in Victoria, but in addition to that there is the Woodwhisperer guild, it's an online guild that you might want to check out.
Junior, small world…you're leaving for IP in nine days?! congrats, I'm very jealous…how long are you going for? Are you going to blog about it a bit here at LJs?
 

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going to try and do 2 years at IP, though i cannot confirm the second year yet.
I will try to post the smaller project as I complete them, if the school is not opposed to it.
 

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A very nice bench and you have displayed it with appropriate photographs.
Sharad
 

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Junior, 2 years at IP! wow, that's going to be an unbelievable experience, I hope to get up there for at least one or two of their 1 week classes in the near future, I'll be sure to say hi if I do.
 

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I've seen this piece in real life, and I can tell you that the surfaces are just fantastic. Great work Dev.

Hey, let's plan on going to IP together for a week!
 

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How did I ever miss this awesome bench ?
The pictures and description of the details are wonderful : )
Added to my favorites !
 
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