Enough With Store bought Chairs!

Good Morning fellow woodworkers. This is the first time i ever built a bench and or seat for that matter. I have a large family 4 sons and the LOML of course. We buy new chairs pretty much every year and or replace them only to watch them fall apart with in 6-8 months. Now i can’t afford to purchase 200 per chairs by no means so i decided to build a Bench seat for the dinning room table. We had an old dinning set back when our family was very young and we had a bench seat still around the storage. I pulled it up out of storage and began using it. I looked over the construction of the Bench seat and said to myself ” why not”. And walla my version!

I used 5/4 solid oak for main side supports. Cut the pattern out with my jigsaw. That was a trip to the hardware store for some solid Bosch blades. Trust me you don’t want to cut this thick of material with a cheap blade you will actually break a sweat if you do lol. For the Aprons or cross support how ever they are called i used solid single piece nothing fancy just a 1×6 cut to size. For the Bench and back rest I dusted off the my Biscuit joiner and edge glued the panels and cut to size. I smoothed down the panels with #5 hand plane that Pastor Dingman have giving me. He’s been a great friend and someone bringing me into the light of Hand Planes! I used my Kregs Jig for the assembly of this piece. I’m still learning the fundamentals of tenon and mortise so i went with what i know. I put another cross support under the seat perpendicular for the added strength. Slapped some Clear coats on it and walla my new SOLID OAK bench seat with a price tag of only 100 bucks. Hope you all enjoy this piece for it was a fun build and of course as all ways a lot of lessons learned.

-- " I love the smell of saw dust in the morning"