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Guerilla Banking

On my days off, I like to take the car and drive a bit to take Tarly on a walk through the nearby fields and forests instead of walking through the immediate neighborhood.

One of our usual rounds comes by an old oak tree in the middle of several fields. And under that oak is a bench. I love to take a break there, drink coffee from a thermos, listen to the birds and pet the dog. I'm nearly 45 and I have come to enjoy the existence of a well placed bench.

So naturally I want more of that. But benches in the middle of nowhere are rare. So as they say: be the change you want to see in the world.

This weekend I build a simple bench and deployed it under another oak near a different field.

I roughly followed the design by Rogue Engineer but had to adjust a few things. Of course I had to convert everything to metric, but I also had to adjust for the fact that I couldn't find boards as wide as he used.

My bench is built from pressure treated spruce. The boards are sold as terrace boards and come in dimensions of 2400x132x32mm. Because I needed two boards for the seat, I had to add a horizontal brace piece. I used a lap joint and waterproof wood glue to join it with the short leg. If you want to skip the lap joint, just sandwiching it between the long and short leg probably works as well.

Check my sketches above for layout and cut list. The legs are held together by four M10 bolts on each side, the back rest is screwed in from the side with lag screws and the seat boards are screwed on from the top with 5×60 wood screws.

Since I already had all the hardware, I only had to buy the four boards needed which cost me 35 EUR. For finish I used an oil based stain.

PS. the title of this post only makes sense to German speakers

Tags:
diy, woodworking
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