Swing and Playground

This past Spring I took a WW course at the local public schools and the first large project I tackled was to build a bench swing to add onto the playground I built the year before.

I used the plans from The Complete Book of Woodworking (which has several great plans to help you dabble in different areas). I substituted PT for cedar for the obvious cost advantage plus the playground was already PT.

This project was also my first time using several of the standard power tools in a typical shop (jointer, bandsaw, dado stack, router, oscillating sander) however going PT helped me avoid finishing. Getting the curves on the bandsaw to match the 3 back-supports proved difficult even when tracing from the first template (chalk it up to aggressive oscillating sanding!).

My largest lesson learned was when installing the slats. I let my daughter (3 yr old) help me hand-start the screws in my predrilled holes and we ended up getting a little lax on the spacing and 2/3rds of the way up we were no longer on the supports. Luckily last year I picked up some large K-Bodys on clearance and was able to remove some slats and re-straighten the frame to get it back in alignment. Next time I’ll let her help on the last few not the first few!

The playground was a ready-to-assemble kit on clearance at Lowes (Legacy by Playstar ). After building the bench swing I replaced the main beam with a 16’ one. For a more indepth review on the playground read my review on Epinions

-- Scott