Okay, I'm going to throw together a simple bench here.
Child's bench slash single step stool for the kitchen.
Whatever you want to use it for.
This one's going to be like a single step for a kitchen.
Anyway, I've got two pieces that are two and a half inches wide.
They are 21 inches long.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to come down, I think, about an inch
and just make a 45 degree notch on both these, both sides.
This is some junk pine.
I mean, big knot that's going to be on the inside.
The top's going to be down like this.
Just using up some scraps here, trying to make something usable
and also fulfill somebody's need of a little step stool.
We'll see how this goes.
These two are going to be the runners underneath the top itself.
I've got a 10 inch piece.
This all came out of a 1 x 12, so we're at 9 1⁄4 wide.
10 inches, that's going to be one leg.
I'm going to route out a little recess here,
so you've got two points of contact with the floor.
10 inches out of a 1 x 12, that's leg number one.
10 inches out of a 1 x 12, that's leg number two.
Then 22 inches, a little wide,
but that's going to be the top of the step stool
slash child's bench slash whatever you want it to be.
Let me get these marked out for cuts
because I'm going to show you a little bit of joinery
that I'm going to be using, and we'll go from there.
I've got both of my legs marked out, which is what I'm going to do here.
I've got this little template I like to use for the bottom of trash cans.
I've just outlined that on here for the bottom.
I'm going to trim out most of this with a jigsaw
and then clamp the pattern up here and route the rest of it nice and clean.
What I'm doing here is, this is all out of 1 x 12,
so if I was to just bring this up to the top,
it's going to be all in line and I don't want that.
I want a half inch overhang for the top on all sides.
So what I did is, and I'll also have some pieces coming this way to brace underneath.
My thickness of my pieces is 3 quarters of an inch plus a half inch overhang.
So I came over 1 1⁄4 inch and dropped down the height of my top supports,
which is 2 1⁄2 inches.
I'm going to make this cut, this cut on the table saw to cut out this corner.
And then, that's where my pieces are going to be.
But I also, like I said, I want the half inch overhang.
So I came in a half inch and I'm going to taper this back down to this corner of the base.
That way the base is as wide as it can be from the material I'm giving.
And this will allow me to have a half inch overhang.
It just dresses it up a little bit. We'll see how it goes.
I've never done this before, so this is all just kind of something I thought about yesterday
and figured I'd throw it together today.
But half inch overhang, 3 quarter thickness of the material, 2 1⁄2 inch rise for my material.
I'm going to get most of this cut out and then we'll start to assemble it.
So I've got the legs cut out.
And now you can kind of see how this thing goes together.
I've got these horizontal stretcher pieces, whatever you want to call them.
The leg is off inset about an eighth of an inch.
I haven't figured out how I'm going to glue it up yet or how I'm going to attach everything.
As you can see from this side, let me come over here.
The base is 11 1⁄4 on the bottom and the top is 11 1⁄4.
But the legs, horrible light from that window.
The legs are tapered in a half inch from this point up to where the stretcher touches.
So it's tapered in a half an inch.
Then it goes in another 3⁄4 and then up 2 1⁄2 right in there.
And that's how this connects.
You know you could just, if you've got horizontal grain to grain,
you can just screw into here and here if you want.
If you want screws exposed and then screw in the top over here.
I think I'm going to go for a little bit cleaner look.
So on the inside, let's see.
I think on the inside I'm just going to use a couple pocket hole screws going into here
and then a couple coming up.
Maybe three coming up on each leg and then maybe make a couple coming up on each side over here.
But it's starting to take shape.
I don't know what profile I want to use on the top if I'm going to use a profile.
It's just going to be a little step stool so I'm not sure where I'm going to go from here.
All right, I'm going to start assembling here in a minute on this step stool, bench, whatever.
But I want to show you how I decided to do the joinery in here.
Nothing special here, just pocket hole screws.
The weight, this is upside down obviously, so here's the bottom of the feet.
The weight obviously is going to be transferred from the top piece onto these side supports.
The side supports are sitting in this cutout that we cut earlier.
So that's going to directly transfer the weight onto the leg.
So no need for any fancy joinery here.
What I did is drilled a couple pocket hole screws into the side rails
and then also each piece that gets assembled has got three pocket hole screws going from whatever piece it is,
the sides, the side pieces of the legs.
They each have three going into the top.
So you're going to have about 12 screws into the top.
That's more than plenty.
I don't need any glue here, no fancy angles to support.
It's kind of cut and dry here.
I'm going to go ahead and screw these together.
I'm not quite sure what profile I want to do for the top yet.
I don't know if I want to put like an OG or round over a chamfer.
I'm not sure yet, so I'm going to leave that off until the final bit.
Also, these small areas like this, it's going to be very hard to get a drill with the square head number two
into the screws itself because of the adjacent piece over here.
It's always handy to have some of these little extensions.
With this, I'll be able to get the top screw from over here
and then be able to go underneath this rail to get to the bottom one.
Keep some extensions handy when you're working with pocket hole screws.
I'm going to get this together and then maybe figure out what the heck I'm going to do with the top.
Here's a little bit of what's going on.
Here it is completed.
Just a simple step stool, children's bench, whatever you want to call it.
I used scrap to make this.
One by twelve material.
I think you can make one about six feet or so.
Like I said, I just used scrap.
Some pretty nasty scrap, actually.
I've got a hole that goes all the way through this piece.
Anyway, about twenty or twenty-five pocket hole screws.
Real simple construction.
Don't need anything fancy.
You've got a couple cutouts on either one of your legs,
which is great because whatever weight you put on the top is transferred to the side rails,
which goes right down into the legs.
It's going to be very strong just in its own right right there.
Real easy to do.
I decided to chamfer the bottom of the top thirty degrees.
It kind of gives it a little bit more of an hourglass type of figure to it, I guess.
I was going to round it over, but the only curves I have in this project are down here by the legs.
For the rest, it's predominantly straight angles.
I figured I'd go with this. It looks alright.
The top of it has got some horrible overspray from the last project I did.
I'm going to paint this thing probably a medium brown.
I've got a lot of brown left over from Christmas.
I may mix in a little bit of white to lighten it up a little bit.
I was asked to make one for my neighbor's wife so she can get up in the upper kitchen cabinets.
This serves a purpose. It's pretty strong.
It's just cheap pine.
I can stand on it. I can reach the ceiling. I'm kind of short.
It's not going to break. It'll last a while.
No fancy jewelry.
Zero glue in this thing.
I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this thing. I didn't really care.
I just wanted something utilitarian.
I guess that's how you pronounce it.
Something to get the job done.
Anywho, I'll post a link to the SketchUp file.
And the materials list and cut list.
Hopefully you can make one. Hopefully you can get some use out of one.
Here it is.
Nice little bench.
