# shoe bench



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Identifying a need*

I live in a house with 7 people, 5 of them teenagers and 3 of the females. We have a LOT of shoes in our home. We don't wear shoes in the house so we always kick off our shoes right in the entryway as we come in the front door. The result is often a huge pile of mixed up shoes. Here is a picture of just some of the shoes. This is after I cleaned up most of the shoes after throwing a fit and after everyone has already left the house for the day, this is just the small remainder of shoes when everyone is gone. Believe me, it is usually MUCH worse.










We need a better solution.

Obviously, based on the title of this blog entry, I want a shoe bench. This blog will chronicle my solution to our messy shoe pile.


----------



## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Identifying a need*
> 
> I live in a house with 7 people, 5 of them teenagers and 3 of the females. We have a LOT of shoes in our home. We don't wear shoes in the house so we always kick off our shoes right in the entryway as we come in the front door. The result is often a huge pile of mixed up shoes. Here is a picture of just some of the shoes. This is after I cleaned up most of the shoes after throwing a fit and after everyone has already left the house for the day, this is just the small remainder of shoes when everyone is gone. Believe me, it is usually MUCH worse.
> 
> ...


Nice Danskos Is one of you a physician? I need one of these too, so I'll be following you closely


----------



## jbertelson (Sep 26, 2009)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Identifying a need*
> 
> I live in a house with 7 people, 5 of them teenagers and 3 of the females. We have a LOT of shoes in our home. We don't wear shoes in the house so we always kick off our shoes right in the entryway as we come in the front door. The result is often a huge pile of mixed up shoes. Here is a picture of just some of the shoes. This is after I cleaned up most of the shoes after throwing a fit and after everyone has already left the house for the day, this is just the small remainder of shoes when everyone is gone. Believe me, it is usually MUCH worse.
> 
> ...


Guess what I am starting to design today….......a shoe bench! So I follow with interest.

Mine will be at the entrance to the house, from the shop, which is contiguous with the garage. So one of my features will be a raised platform with slats on part of it so that sawdust and dirt fall through to a catch basin below. I will have a bench with some storage for shoes in it, and perhaps a slide out foot stool. On the other side of the platform will be a larger shoe rack. We do not wear shoes in the house, fairly typical of Alaska. While I am at it, I have to trim out the door entry to match.

This will not be fine furniture quality, since it basically resides in my shop.

But with only two of us at home, we need more shoe space than you! What's with that?


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Identifying a need*
> 
> I live in a house with 7 people, 5 of them teenagers and 3 of the females. We have a LOT of shoes in our home. We don't wear shoes in the house so we always kick off our shoes right in the entryway as we come in the front door. The result is often a huge pile of mixed up shoes. Here is a picture of just some of the shoes. This is after I cleaned up most of the shoes after throwing a fit and after everyone has already left the house for the day, this is just the small remainder of shoes when everyone is gone. Believe me, it is usually MUCH worse.
> 
> ...


Al, nope, neither of us is a physician, but I do have sore feet. These danskos help, they really do. My lady friend turned me on to dansko a few years ago and now that is all I wear, even in the dead of winter. They make a difference on my feet and back.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Looking for solutions*

So now I know I want a shoe bench, the next step is to see what I can find. I like to make things but if it turns out I can find the perfect bench a dime a dozen that drops right in, I'm gonna buy it. And if I don't find one for a dime, well at least I'll get some ideas about what to make. The first place to look of course is the internet, a quick google search for shoe bench and shoebench turns up quite a few possibilities. Unfortunately most of them are too much money, too much ugly, too much low quality, too much the wrong size, and just too much wrong.

So I'm gonna make my own (you probably guessed that part being that this is a blog on lumberjocks).

So given that I'm gonna make it myself it's time to look for some ideas. It looks like shoe benches come in mostly two styles, the shelf style









and the cubby style









And of course no search would be complete without searching lumberjocks

There is this one and this one and this one and this one and this one. All excellent benches, some close to what I'm thinking about, some not as much.

I'm definitely leaning to the cubby style bench. I know my kids, if I build it, they will fill it. If I build a shelf style bench it might keep the shoes off the floor but the shoes will end up tossed on the shelf in a mixed up pile, not on the floor but not much better. A cubby style it is.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Design Time*

My shoe bench is going to be the cubby style, flat on the top to sit, little cubbies all in a row to organize shoes.

First things first it has to fit where I want it. I want to put the bench behind the entry door up against the wall, mostly where the shoes are piled now.








Take some measurements to find the maximum dimensions that will fit.
















Around a foot deep and 60 - 62 inches long.
How high do I want the seat. I want it to be comfortable, time to measure a few of my standard sitting spots where I put on my shoes and socks.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, that's where I put on my socks. It works, mostly cause that's where my socks are, but it is really too high to be comfortable for a bench.








I have a little stool I keep near the door I sometime sit on to put on my boots. It is really too short to be comfortable, but it's handy.








Probably the most comfortable height to put on and off my shoes is when I drag over a dining room chair. When my feet hurt or at the end of a long day a chair is most comfortable. Let's see, my dining room chairs are about 17 inches or so.









So it looks like I need the envelope of the bench to be around 17 inches high, about 12 inches deep, and between 60 and 62 inches long.

There is another thread here on Lumberjocks asking the question, do you use plans or not. Me, I always use plans, at least for anything more complex than a simple box, or cutting board, or something I've made a bunch of times. For something new, something relatively complex, I make a set of plans. And my favorite tool for making up a set of plans is Sketchup. Using Sketchup allows me to build the item digitally, work through the joinery, look at the design from all sides, create a cut list, and walk through the cut and assembly flow, all before I set foot in the shop.

Here's my final design, saved in Sketchup 8. I measured a pair of shoes to get a feel for how large the cubbies need to be, bigger than 6 inches and less than 9 inches wide, 6 inches high, and however deep the bench is, in this case a foot.
And a cut list with dimensions. Not really a cut list, more of an unfolded layout, a cut picture??


----------



## SPalm (Oct 9, 2007)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Design Time*
> 
> My shoe bench is going to be the cubby style, flat on the top to sit, little cubbies all in a row to organize shoes.
> 
> ...


Cool. It is really fun watching a project move through the stages of development.

Maybe a toe kick in the front?

Thanks for the ride,
Steve


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Design Tweaks*

If you download and try to use the Sketchup design from the previous blog entry a couple of things changed in the final implementation. First I changed the dados to sliding dovetails and the through dovetails on the ends to half blind dovetails.

One of the design constraints I self imposed was to use only wood on wood with glue to assemble the bench, no metal fasteners. I decided on dovetails for the ends, sliding dovetails for the dividers, and wedged through tenons to fix the shelves.

The design uses wedged through tenons to hold the shelves










I figured with the through tenon end grain showing I probably want to use through dovetails for the ends. The layout and dimensions in the design are sized for the bench ends to have enough material to cut a through dovetail.










When I made the ends I decided to use half blind dovetails, I just think it looks better, so the ends are too big in the drawing.










You'll either have to fix it in the drawing or modify the ends on the fly like I did.

The second change, from dados to sliding dovetails, does not require a drawing or material change. The sliding dovetails are the same depth as the dados so the cut list remains the same. Just cut a dovetail dado instead of a square dado in the shelves and cut dovetails on the divider boards.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Prepping the stock*

I looked at various woods for the bench and ended up deciding on poplar, why, because it was relatively cheap, and I could get it in wide boards.

I wanted to build the top of the bench as a single board. I sorted through the wide boards available and looked for one with some interesting figure. Here's the one I finally settled on:










I didn't want to split the seat but my jointer is only 6 inches wide. Unfortunately the board with the best figure had the most cup. The cup was pretty bad, over an 1/8 of an inch.










The seat is just over a foot wide, 61 inches long, has an eighth inch cup, and wont fit my jointer. So I have a couple options. I could make a planer sled and slide it through my benchtop planer. Or a better choice for me, mostly because I enjoy doing it, is to hand plane it flat on one side and then run it through the power planer to straighten up the other side.










After a bit of work on one side it's starting to flatten out










Eventually I got the top and selves flattened out and ended up needing to work the sides too.










It turned out to be quite a bit of work but I enjoyed it. Kind of the quiet therapeutic woodworking I don't get enough of. Anyhow, progress is being made.


----------



## WayneC (Mar 8, 2007)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Prepping the stock*
> 
> I looked at various woods for the bench and ended up deciding on poplar, why, because it was relatively cheap, and I could get it in wide boards.
> 
> ...


Looks like you got there. It is going to be nice when you get it finished. Do you have a plane set up for rougher work? Might have gone faster with a plane set up to take a more agressive cut.


----------



## Sylvain (Jul 23, 2011)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Prepping the stock*
> 
> I looked at various woods for the bench and ended up deciding on poplar, why, because it was relatively cheap, and I could get it in wide boards.
> 
> ...


This is a very nice shoe bench with plenty of place for the shoes.
I would like one. 
I have to go to the living room if I want to seat.

I understand that you would want to plane the underside of the upper board for joining purposes.

But why remove the cup above? Wouldn't it be more comfortabe with a cup under the seat?


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Prepping the stock*
> 
> I looked at various woods for the bench and ended up deciding on poplar, why, because it was relatively cheap, and I could get it in wide boards.
> 
> ...


Wayne, yep, I do have multiple 5's I use for rougher work, yea!, but I'm embarrassed to say EVERY one of them needs sharpened, boo!. I do have a veritas low angle jack and I could have swapped the blade from the LA 7 into the jack. Guess I didn't think about it. I prefer the big planes, the bigger the better. I picked up the 7 and didn't think about switching to the jack. The plane I like to use most, after a LA block plane, is a number 8. You get it started and it don't stop. So yeah, I need to get in a sharpening session and use the right tool for the right job .

Sylvain, you know you might be right, a curved bench seat probably would be more comfortable. I guess I didn't even think about it, about curving the seat. I was so focused on thinking about the joinery I didn't really think about comfort. The dovetail jig I use references off of both faces and they both need to be flat and parallel. But that is just the last 8 inches or so. Most of the bench seat could have been curved on top.

Thinking about it now I probably should have used thicker material, flattened the seat to do the joinery, and then reworked the seat to a comfortable curve. Something to keep in mind for the next one.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Joinery*

Ok, here comes the interesting part, not the hardest part, but the most interesting part. Getting all of the joints to line up and come together snug without a lot of slop was a bit of a trick. The bench has 22 sliding dovetails, two ends with half blind dovetails, and 8 through wedged tenons. They all have to line up pretty close or things wont come together square.

I started with the half blind dovetails on the ends.










This gave me the inside dimension from the base of the dovetails down the side to the shelves.

I used a Porter Cable 4212 Dovetail Jig to cut the half blind dovetails and the sliding dovetail dados. Here is a picture of the jig setup to cut a sliding dovetail dado.










The Porter Cable is a pretty common jig, not too fancy or flexible but it cuts a standard dovetail with little setup or trouble. It can also cut through dovetails, sliding dovetails, dados, finger joints, and probably a few other joints if you're creative, for a reasonable price and not too much fiddling.

After cutting the half blind dovetails on the end boards I setup and cut the sliding dovetail dados on the seat and shelves. I marked the edge of the dovetail dado referenced from the end of the self. I then transferred the mark to the mating shelf to make sure the marks were in the exact same place, and then used the mark to line up with the sliding dovetail slot on the dovetail jig.










To cut the dados I setup two routers, one with a 1/2 inch straight bit to hog out the bulk of the dovetail slot and one with the dovetail bit.










Obviously the dovetail has to be cut in a single pass at full depth. To ease the burden on the dovetail bit I first hogged out the bulk of the dado with a straight bit set just a smidge shallower than the final dovetail depth.










After that I just slid the shelf until the layout lines lined up with the edge of the dado slot on the jig and cut the dovetail dado in two passes, one pass with the straight bit and one pass with the dovetail bit.










The through wedge tenons turned out to be a bigger hassle than I had anticipated. Getting the through mortises clean and square without too much of a wedge angle turned out to be too much for me. The mortises turned out too big, the tenon wedge slots are uneven and at an angle. All in all not my best work.










I hogged out the through mortise with a forstner bit and "squared" up the mortise with a chisel. Squared is putting it politely.










I then chisled the angle for the wedge. It turns out the wedge angle needs to be pretty small. The tenon will only spread so much, in this case "so much" was not enough. I'm confident the tenons are wedged and are not coming out, but they did end up leaving a gap on the top and bottom of the mortises.










After that fiasco the rest was pretty easy. The dividers are all the same so I could cut the dovetails production style on my router table. Get it setup once and crank out all 4 cuts per divider.



















I used the same dovetail bit moved from my portable router to my router table. I set the bit height to the same depth as the sliding dovetail dado. After a couple trial runs I set the fence offset to end up with a snug fit of the dividers into the dovetail dados.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Joinery*
> 
> Ok, here comes the interesting part, not the hardest part, but the most interesting part. Getting all of the joints to line up and come together snug without a lot of slop was a bit of a trick. The bench has 22 sliding dovetails, two ends with half blind dovetails, and 8 through wedged tenons. They all have to line up pretty close or things wont come together square.
> 
> ...


Pat, that's what I ran into as well, blow out on the back side for the first set of mortises. That's one of the reasons I cut the wedge sides of the mortise extra large, to cut away some of the blow out. That didn't work out too well. I chiseled the second set from the show side and that worked better, but I still had a problem keeping them square.

I cut the wedges in the orientation shown in order to put the wedge forces against the end grain of the mortise.










I didn't figure this out myself, I read about it in Rogowski's Joinery book. He says to keep the wedging forces against the end grain of the mortise. That makes sense to me. It seems like this orientation lowers the chances of splitting the sides and the self. Otherwise the wedge is right along the grain on both the self and the bench end. Seems more likely to split that way.

For finish I'm going with what I pretty much always use. Pure tung oil thinned 50% with mineral spirits, multiple coats, then buff with a scouring pad and paste wax. I like the look better than varnish and I can renew it as needed.


----------



## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Joinery*
> 
> Ok, here comes the interesting part, not the hardest part, but the most interesting part. Getting all of the joints to line up and come together snug without a lot of slop was a bit of a trick. The bench has 22 sliding dovetails, two ends with half blind dovetails, and 8 through wedged tenons. They all have to line up pretty close or things wont come together square.
> 
> ...


This is an excellent project, with some unforgiving joinery, on a rather unforgiving jig (it's the one I use, too). I've resorted to hand-cutting mortises for the same reason. It's hard to prevent blowout with anything other than a bit brace (which I use to pre-rid waste). This is a fine job.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Assembly*

If the fun part was the joinery, the miserable part was the assembly.

The bench has 22 sliding dovetails, two 12 inch half blind dovetails, and 8 through mortises that all have to be glued, lined up, and slid together all before any clamps could be applied.

This would have been a good time to have some long open time glue and a cool day. Instead I was using yellow PVA glue on one of hottest days we've had all summer. It was clear some of the glue was drying before I could get the clamps on. I did get it all together and clamped up and there was squeeze out on most of the joints so the glue must of still had some life when I clamped it up.

If I were more patient I probably could have done the glue in stages, the ends, seat, and shelves. Then come back later and put in the dividers.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Clean up and Finish prep*

Got the clamps off and now it's time to clean up the glue joints and prep the surfaces for finish.

First thing to do was remove the clamps, flip the bench on it's side, and plane all of the joints even.










After leveling the divider joints next came the ends. Bringing the half blind dovetails and through mortises level.



















After the the ends and sides were level and smooth I ran around all of the corners, exterior and interior, with a hand held router and an eighth inch round over bit.










After that it was planing the seat smooth as glass.


----------



## dub560 (Jun 4, 2010)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Clean up and Finish prep*
> 
> Got the clamps off and now it's time to clean up the glue joints and prep the surfaces for finish.
> 
> ...


Are the half blind dovetails strong enough for a project this? Very nice bench..I Like the thru mortise setup


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Clean up and Finish prep*
> 
> Got the clamps off and now it's time to clean up the glue joints and prep the surfaces for finish.
> 
> ...


Without a back I was initially a little worried about racking, having the bench fold over with nothing to keep it square. Now that it's assembled I don't think that is going to happen. With all of the dividers dovetailed in and the through tenons wedged tight there is no flex or movement anywhere. The wood is all on the thick side of 3/4 and I sized the dovetails all to be snug. I guess we'll see over time but right now it is heavy and solid as a rock.


----------



## coloradoclimber (Apr 7, 2007)

*Finish and Finished*

To finish the bench I used my favorite finish, a few coats of thinned tung oil followed by paste wax. I like an oil finish because I think it leaves the most natural feeling surface. It may not be the most durable but I like the look and the feel and it is pretty easy to renew. This bench shouldn't be seeing harsh use, not like a table or desk top.

I added a couple drawers for scarves or gloves, and I'll probably end up with a row of coat hooks on the wall behind it, but it's a start.

Anyhow, here it is done. We are glad to have it and even though most of the shoes are picked up, there's still a pair or two kicked off in the doorway.


----------



## Bearpie (Feb 19, 2010)

coloradoclimber said:


> *Finish and Finished*
> 
> To finish the bench I used my favorite finish, a few coats of thinned tung oil followed by paste wax. I like an oil finish because I think it leaves the most natural feeling surface. It may not be the most durable but I like the look and the feel and it is pretty easy to renew. This bench shouldn't be seeing harsh use, not like a table or desk top.
> 
> ...


Very functional and looks great too!


----------

