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Cedar "garden" bench I built for my brothers wedding.
I had been hemming and hawing up until the last minute ( 5 days before the wedding) about what I should give as a gift. They asked for either items made personally by the guests or donations to go towards the building of their new home.
I went through several ideas from chairs to benches to picture frames before settling on building a bench.

I ended up basing the design on plans from the march 2012 issue of the Family Handyman. I built the frame out of 2×4 cedar ripped into 2×3 instead of using and 1x. I also tried my hand at some mortise and tenon work instead of the biscut joinery. I really disliked the look of one of the top slats and drove to town (70 mile round trip) to find just one more bit of cedar to curb my anxiety and found the deep dark red board buried in the 10' 1×10 area. So back home I went and ripped down the new board into the three dark seat slats. I am so glad I made that trip, I really think the outcome was worth the gas and time.

This was my first shot at mortise and tenon and I figured hey, it's cedar this will be a breeze. It was more difficult than I thought to make anything resembling a nice clean cut without moving very slow and carefully, the light colored cedar felt like I was trying to chisel away at a Styrofoam cooler. Loved doing i tho and I really look forward to doing more work like this.

I used Danish Oil - Natural for the finish.

Thank you for looking and happy woodworking!

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absolutely beautiful! I think the contrasting wood colors are just the thing to take a bench like this to the next level so to speak. you made a very wise choice grasshopper :) yet another project I'll be 'borrowing'. cheers!
 

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Thanks!
 
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