Hey! I'm Bob and I like to make stuff!
Today we're gonna turn this log into a bench;
with hidden storage.
Today we're gonna do something a little bit different.
I don't really know how this is gonna turn out.
This is a piece of wood that my grandfather gave me before he passed
and he had it in his shop for a long time
so its nice and dry.
I don't know what kind of wood it is though.
So I think what we're gonna do is turn this into a bench.
I don't really have a plan for it,
I haven't done any sketching or anything like that,
we're just gonna kinda wing it.
The only thing I do know is that this gonna be the top,
its gonna have some sort of a steel leg assembly
on each side or embedded in it,
and I want there to be some hidden storage on the inside.
So I think the first step is gonna be to flatten the top,
that should make the whole thing a little bit easier to deal with.
Alright, lets figure this thing out!
I put a couple of bricks under both sides of this
to hold in place, and went at the top with a hand plain and some chisels.
Also just to point out,
this is probably not the most effective way to flatten this top,
and this is probably not the right plain to use,
I probably don't have the right chisels,
but this is actually all that I have on hand so I'm just kinda using what I got.
there are always better tools to be able to accomplish a task,
but you have to use what you have at your disposal.
So in this case it's just gonna take a while.
After a couple of hours it's looking pretty good,
its not perfectly flat but it really doesn't need to be yet.
If you did need to flatten the slab,
probably the best way to do it
would be to use a jig, and a router
to just go back and forth and get it completely the same level everywhere.
But in this case I just wanted it roughly flat,
so I could flip it over and take it through the bandsaw.
I want to make a cut about right here, all the way across,
so the top section will come off.
But this piece of wood is too tall to push through my bandsaw longways.
And the reason I didn't put it trough my planer to clean this off
is that this too tall this way to fit through my planer.
So my plan is,
to flip this over, take it though the bandsaw,
and cut this right in half,
and then on each one of those two halves,
run it through and cut off this section
lets try it out and see if it works.
I ran this through the bandsaw.
Now I didn't had the quite right blade for this,
the one I had worked,
but a thicker blade would have worked better for resawing.
I just took my time to make sure to push this through,
and not force it, because I didn't want to snap the blade,
and I wanted to try to keep the cut as straight as possible.
I moved over the fence,
to cut off the slices on the top of both of these pieces
You can see a little bit of smoke coming up,
in diffrent places, when it burns,
and that told me I was pushing a little bit too hard,
and I needed to slow down a little bit.
At least on my bandsaw,
if I try to use the fence,
the wood will often try to wander away from the fence once it gets past the blade.
As long as you're aware of this,
and you can work against it, it works pretty well.
Making cuts like this by eye,
often works better.
Bonus points to you,
if you saw the mistake I just made.
But if not, let me explain what I did.
I was more worried about the camera than the actual piece of wood,
so when I picked it up and put it to the saw,
I wasn't paying attention to which face I was cutting.
And in this case, it matters.
So I cut of the wrong side of the piece of wood.
It's not a huge deal, I'm gonna glue it back on, and clamp it down,
and then, I'll go back and recut it again.
Mainly it's just a hassle more than anything else.
So I covered these faces with a whole lot of glue,
spread it out really evenly and then added some clamps.
I let it dry for a couple of hours,
and then went back and cut the correct face
Eventually I ended up with this.
And it was time to join the slabs back into a single slab.
I lined them up and made some marks,
to use for a biscuit joiner.
Now the biscuits here don't add a lot of strength,
but they do help to align the pieces when you glue them back together.
So I added some glue down into the slots that I cut,
and along the faces.
I added the biscuits into the slots,
and pressed both pieces back together.
The pencil marks also help you get it aligned,
You wanna make sure that it's aligned before you start clamping it down.
Once you do it turns back into a single slab.
Add the clamps on the top and the
bottom to make sure that it didn't warp
any other direction as well.
Then it was time to hollow out the center of this section
I measured in from both ends of both pieces,
just to give myself a point of reference,
and then, used a circular saw to make some cuts there.
these are my starting points.
I wasn't sure how hard this wood was
and how well I would be able to cut it away with a chisel,
so I cut from line to line to
kinda give myself some marks, and
to split the grain there.
I went at it with the chisel and hammer and knocked away
a single piece and i found that it was
gonna be really tough to do this
without cutting some slots.
So, I took the circular saw again and went all the way
down the piece cutting about every inch.
Obviously the more cuts you make with
the circular saw the smaller the pieces
are gonna be which is going to make
them easier to take out for about an
hour i use the chisel and a hammer and
just cut out as much of this area as I
possibly could
this was a lot of work but it was
actually really rewarding as well
eventually i tried to flatten out the
space as much as i could but i didn't
want to get a perfectly flat just wasn't
really that important to the second
piece i did the same thing but this time
i just use a hammer to knock as much of
this out as possible before using the
chisel this was way faster with
basically the same result in the end
while I'm doing that I wanted to do a
quick add for myself
you guys may not even realize this but
my website I like to make self.com I saw
all sorts of awesome t-shirts and
stickers like this one it's brand-new
also sell digital plans for a lot of the
projects that i make so you can make
them yourself also signing up for my
email newsletter is the best way to be
sure that you never miss a single bit of
content that I put out whether it's
videos or podcasts or anything else
anyway just wanted to throw that out
there go check it out
I like to make stuff calm i got these
pieces in the right orientation and then
I made marks on the top and the sides of
both ends just to make sure that I was
cutting in the right places
that took these to the table saw with
the blade at one inch and the fence one
inch from the blade Iran these pieces
through and cut out a one-inch square on
the end of both pieces this was a little
bit sketchy because none of the faces
were flat so the wood didn't sit against
the fence for the tabletop perfectly
flat if you're doing anything like this
be really careful because they can catch
and kick back very easily with these
cuts made I line the pieces up and then
drew marks on both ends just add some
biscuits like I did before to reattach
these pieces when I went to glue these
pieces up i made sure not to let the
glue seat down into where the bark is it
would be really difficult to remove any
of the glue that it's squeezed out into
that bark area so just made sure to
cover all the surfaces as well as
possible i put in the biscuits and
reattach these pieces and then added
clamps to the flat side to hold them
together this work pretty well but it
was actually a really weird shape to
clamp also notice that some of the bark
was coming loose from the bottom where
I'd cut it so i squared some glue
underneath the bark in between it and
the wood and it needs a strap to hold
them together while it dried then it was
time to make the steel frame for this
bench i use my new miter saw to cut the
steel for the first time and they're not
a sponsor for this video but i have to
say i was really impressed with how well
it worked with other cells in the past
I've had trouble with deflection when
you're cutting an angle but this one
actually cut a perfect 45 i measured out
the short side of this piece of steel to
match the with the log then I cut the
other minor on the other end
I didn't test fit with this piece to
make sure that it fits inside the log
and then i just copied it sighs onto
another piece of steel cut this one down
as well and these will act as the top
and the bottom follow the same procedure
to do the uprights for each one of the
frames and ended up with eight pieces to
make a frame for each end of this log
these are a little bit taller than they
are wide so make sure to lay them out to
make sure that I was grabbing the right
pieces i took the pieces from the top
and then drill three holes down into
them you step bits here just to get a
bigger hole at the top and a smaller
hole of the bottom
I laid out the frame and make sure that
all the corners were square before
putting attack on to each corner just to
hold the pieces in place once i had a
nice stack there and went back and did
full welds on the inside and the outside
of all of the corners
I like frames like this to be flush on
the outside to the flap discs to each
one of these welds to get them
completely flat on the inside corner I
wasn't quite as worried but I used a
file just to try to wear them down a
little bit then whatever the entire
thing with the flap discs really lightly
just to remove the mill scale then I
made another frame the exact same way
for the other side I flipped over the
log and fit these pieces into the gaps
that I'd cut once they were in place i
measured and marked the center of each
one of these and then measure the
distance between them
I just cut another piece of square
tubing with a flat end and fit in
between these two it was easier in this
case to hold them in place with clamps
and tag them before doing full welds
rather than trying to use the welding
team this way I knew that they were
perfectly square to each other and in
the right position
I ground this one down and shine it up
with the flap discs just like I did the
other frames then I took it outside and
added a couple of light coats of semi
gloss black and while that dried I got
the hand plane to completely flattened
the top
actually I didn't fully flatten it there
are some areas that were pretty low and
so for those used an orbital sander just
around them over
you're just going to be sitting on this
so really I just wanted to smooth it out
to hold the seat panel in place
I made a couple of cleats out of
hardwood just too attached to each end I
cut curves on the bandsaw on each end of
these so that they would fit down in the
cut out that i made on the inside of the
log once i had them flush with the top
surface added a little bit of CA glue to
them and then activator to the seat and
carefully lined it up and set it down
and those pieces bonded immediately
this glue really just held these pieces
in place we'll have pre-drilled holes
and drove in some long screws to
permanently attach them then it was time
to assemble everything the easiest way I
found to do this was to set the frame on
its side and then wedge the login from
the backside it was tight enough that it
held in place so i can drive in the
screws remember how i made those larger
holes on the top of the frame that's so
I could drive in a screw through the
hole in the bottom into the wood is
pretty long screws so this thing really
locked together once i had all the
screws in a flipped it up and put on the
top then I applied some finish to all
the surfaces except for the bargain that
was it
I'm really happy with how this thing
turned out especially considering the
fact that i didn't even sketch anything
to start with this was all made up on
the fly and I just kind of figured it
out as it went along which is really fun
sometimes when you're using logs like
this that are not mill down it's really
fun to work around their shape rather
than forcing the wood to work into the
shape that you want in this case i just
measured as i went and made the steel
frame to fit alongside the wood and
speaking of the metal frame i was a lot
more comfortable using the welder this
time and I was really happy with how
this frame came out
that's good because hopefully that'll
motivate me to do more metal projects in
the future the more use the tools the
more comfortable i am with them if
you're like me on the East Coast you may
have noticed that there's a lot of trees
being knocked down right now for
hurricane Matthew or another hurricane
that's come through if you go around and
collect some of that lower you can use
it for projects like this after it dries
out
just remember you don't always have to
go to the big-box store to get the wood
that you use for your projects i hope
you liked this one let me know what you
think about it down in the comments I've
got all sorts of other videos that you
might be interested in metalworking
woodworking electronics 3d printing all
sorts of stuff so be sure to check those
out and don't forget to subscribe thanks
for watching guys see you next time