Woodworking Projects - Outdoor Furniture

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Build a weather-resistant concrete bench

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Create the look of stone with a sleek benchtop cast from ordinary concrete

Legs to stand on
The concrete benchtop sits on a curved and tapered cedar support structure that's connected with mortise-and-tenon joinery. Begin by preparing the legs. Saw off the factory-rounded edges of a 4x4 using your tablesaw, then rip the material to the final size of 2 1/2" x 2 1/2". Cross cut the legs to length with a chopsaw.

Next, lay out your mortise locations, two per leg, according to the plans. Use a 1"-diameter Forstner bit mounted in a drillpress to remove the bulk of the material for the 3"-tall x 1"-wide x 1"-deep mortises. Square up the sides of the mortises with a sharp chisel.

Next, lay out the tapers on the mortised sides of the legs and rough-cut them with a bandsaw. Clean up the tapers with a couple of passes over a jointer, or you could use a hand plane or random-orbit sander. Just be careful not to let the taper creep up the leg to where it might interfere with the rails.

Rip the rails to width from 2x6 stock, then cross cut them to length. As you're planning your cuts, keep in mind that you should remove the mill-rounded edges on these pieces.

Next, lay out 1"-long tenons on the ends of each rail and a couple of pieces of scrap wood of the same thickness. Cut tenons on the ends of a piece of scrap using the mitre gauge on your tablesaw fitted with a dado blade. Use these scrap pieces to get the machine settings correct before you cut your rails.

Next, lay out the gentle curve on the bottoms of the long rails. I like to use a thin strip of straight-grained maple for this job. Just drive a couple of brads into the rail and bend the strip up to form the curve. Mark the curve with a pencil and cut it out on a bandsaw. For symmetry, use the newly-cut rail as a template to mark the second rail. Clean up the bandsaw cuts on a spindle sander or with a handheld belt sander. The curve is shallow enough that you can use the front of the belt sander to get in where you need to.

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