Mission Style Bench

A co-worker hired me to build a bench for his dining room table for a christmas gift for his wife.

Solid red oak construction. The legs were laminated from 3 peices. The leg end stretcher and main stretcher is all through mortise and tenon construction. The end stretchers are also pinned to the legs with a walnut dowel. The main lower stretcher is also screwed from the bottom of the end stretchers for additional strength. The top frame is done with all pocket hole joinery. Very quick, and very strong. The legs/base is screwed and glued to the upper frame. I added a upper frame center support for additional strength. A strong peice of 1-1/8” thick white oak.

The top is screwed to the main frame with clips to allow for seasonal expansion/contraction. The top wood ended up having some “tiger grain” (I think that’s what its called), which looks unique, but lead to more tearout than the plain lumber.

It’s stained with a custom made stain to match the dining room table and finished with 3 coats spray on satin poly.

After getting it stained I had several very bad blotches on the inside of the lower stretchers. Enough to not be acceptable to me (it looked horrible). I realized that when I had washed off the glue squeeze out from the mortise and tennons, I used not so clean water not thinking it would be an issue. I spent a couple additional hours re-sanding the inside of the lower stretchers, which is very challenging to do once it’s all put together, and re-staining. They turned out great after the re-sanding (luckily), and I learned that I should use fresh water on every joint to clean glue squeeze-out. An additional 5 minutes of getting fresh water would have saved an additional 2 hours of work, and a few hours of being upset at myself.

Thanks for looking

-- Jeremy - Marshfield, WI