In The Garden Bench for All Seasons, Gary Snediker, fashions a bench of Spanish Cedar, marine epoxy and copper rivets. The idea is to be maintenance free and durable.
I do not follow the reason for offsetting the tenons on the seat rails for strength. What is gained by the offset?
Uh, I plan on making this out of cypress, as the cedar is sky high. What considerations should I take?
Thanks
Frank
Replies
By moving the mortises to the outside of the legs, the mortises can be deeper before they run into each other, allowing for longer tenons which are stronger. This is important with the seat rails because they have to take a lot of weight and dynamic loads if someone sits down hard or kids jump up on the seat.
I don't have any experience with cypress as a furniture wood, but it strikes me as being about as strong as cedar so it should work for the bench. Just be sure to use straight grained, knot free stock for the seat slats, they'll have a moderate amount of stress on them.
John White
Edited 2/16/2008 12:26 pm ET by JohnWW
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