Museum Bench Project #1: Background

I’m a member of the San Antonio Woodworker’s Guild. The Guild recently decided to do a project for the San Antonio Museum of Art. The project is to build a bench to be used in the museum. The museum has several benches, so it was decided that ours would be similar yet distinctive.

Horace Staph, one of the elder statesmen of our Guild, came up with this idea and did all the necessary coordination with the museum as well as creating the conceptual design.

Prior to us getting the lumber, there were several planning meetings between Horace, David Essary, Keith Hansen, Frank Ezell, Gene Fairchild and Michael Faurot.

Michael Faurot took photos of existing benches at the museum.

Keith Hansen did the initial drafting/drawings based on what Horace designed.

David Essary obtained the Red Oak at a nice discount from Allen & Allen Lumber Co. They milled the lumber to the required thickness and width.

Eugene Fairchild built the bases out of Mesquite that he provided.

Horace supplied the Mesquite for the spacers in the form of two small logs.

Michael milled those two Mesquite logs and made all the Mesquite spacers.

Michael, David, Horace, and Gene cut the oak spacers and rails to size.

Michael and Keith did the first dry-fit/test of all the pieces to see what it would look like and what issues that might present.

Later, Michael, Horace, David, Gene, Phil Starcovic and I got together at Michael’s to discuss the technical details of assembly.

More to come… including lots of pictures and more about the assembly.

-- Always do the Right Thing the Right Way the First Time - if you can figure out what that is! Ken, Spring Branch, TX