DIY Bench | Wood & Metal

Today's video I'm going to show you guys how to make a bench. Actually it's a modern yet rustic bench and we're going to start right now. What is going on? My name is Donnie and welcome to another video. If this is your first time here and you want to learn how to make cool stuff and grow your woodworking side hustle, then be sure to subscribe to my channel and don't forget to turn the bell on so you won't miss anything. Let's get started with this project. I decided to go with cypress lumber as it has a really cool grain texture and it's going to help me achieve the rustic look that I'm going for on this bench. Although these benches are rustic, they're also slightly modern. It's going to be modern because of the metal bases I'm going to do. I'm going to repeat this step for a total of six times because I need six planks to make two benches. All right guys, so I've got six planks here. I'm milling this lumber up and I'm going to make two bench tops out of these. They're roughly going to be six inches deep by 75 inches long. Now let's go through the milling process and get going. These boards have a slight twist in it, so I'm going to take my marker and make a couple of reference marks to know where to apply pressure. After I got that done, I'll stack them up and then I'll run them all through the jointer at the same time. When using the jointer, you want to square up two sides. First is the face. Once that's nice and flat, we're going to flip it over to the edge and we're going to get that done as well. Once the jointer was complete, we moved our boards over to the thickness planer. We're going to mill these boards down until we can get a nice thickness of about an inch and three quarters. The planing is complete and now it's time to go to the table saw. The table saw is going to help us get a parallel edge to the edge that we used on the jointer. This is all part of the milling process, but I moved my table saw over to six inches as that's going to be the size of each plank. All right, so we finished with the milling process of these boards. We've got them all nice and square and flat. Now it's time to arrange them in order to glue them up properly. Let's do this. I'm making reference marks on the end grain to each plank now. You can see the grain patterns going down, up, down. You want to be sure to offset these so that way it helps minimize seasonal wood movement. I love these 90 degree parallel clamps. Whether you're in a small shop, in your home garage, or a massive production shop, space is key. You always need space and being able to stand these clamps up and get it out of your way is a huge asset. We're about to begin the painting stage of these metal bases and it'll be the final step in completing them, but if you would like to see a cool video on welding, stay tuned to the end and I'll have a video cued up on you on a really cool side table that I welded and used a thousand year old lumber for the top. It was a cool project, but stay tuned to the end and I'll have it cued up. Two options with metal bases. One, you can have them powder coated, super expensive, or option number two, which is the method I'm using. I'm using a heat temperature paint, it has a really unique look, and the finish is amazing. Alright, these bench tops are almost complete. I'm about to run them through my 20 inch grizzly planer and just dress it on both sides, top and bottom. It's a really cool process, it's super easy, it gets it done. Now, if you don't have a 20 inch planer, because these bench tops are 18 inches deep, you could always try this method, or you could try this method, but if you're in the market for a grizzly planer, they've given me a discount code for you guys. That right there below. Just use that and you can get 10% off, but let's get going and let's get this done. Let's go! Okay, let's align these two metal bases up, make our reference marks, and move on to the next step. I got the table bench flipped upside down and I just routed out a channel 3 16ths of an inch deep. This is for the metal base to be inserted into it, like so. The reason for this is to prevent racking, which is also known as lateral movement. If you had a dining table base, there would be a wooden or metal support stretcher between the two. That helps prevent racking. That's also the purpose of recessing this in. Now we could easily just attach the metal base to here and most often things would be fine, but this is a step further. It prevents racking and lateral movement and it's a higher standard of quality. So we need to repeat this step a few more times for both benches. Stay with me. Working with cypress, especially old cypress like this lumber, you get a lot of cracks and you need to stabilize those loose cracks and those knots so they don't go and open up any further. So using CA glue is the way to go. In efforts of trying to keep these benches completely approachable and really simple and DIY, I went with a simple stain from midwax. I came up with a nice color and I'll have that in the description box below if you're interested. But this is a nice natural finish and you're also probably wondering, why do you have that white resin filled in the knot holes and the cracks? Well guys, I made these benches to match a dining table that I currently already made for a client and they had white resin poured all over the table. So this is just kind of tying that in. Using a polycrylic finish, water based, it's easy clean up and fast curing time. I'm doing this to the top and bottom of these bench tops and I want to make sure you guys know whenever you're doing a dining table or a bench and you're sealing it, be sure to do the underside as well as the top. You want to keep things nice and even, especially with moisture control and seasonal movement. While we wait for the finish to dry, let's take a nap and listen to the crickets chirp. Just kidding. Let's go. After sliding the bases into the routed area, I started to zip the bases down with screws. Now I'm not using threaded inserts as they're not needed because this is a fixed unit, meaning it's not like a dining table where you need to detach the base from the top. Benches are fixed and this is more than sufficient for this type of build. Now the holes are a little over a quarter inch and the screw shanks are a little under an eighth inch. So I have an eighth inch clearance all around the screw shank for seasonal movement. To watch more how-to videos and cool DIY projects, then click over here to this playlist. I have a bunch of awesome videos and I think they could really help you out. And if you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.