A Welcoming Bench for an Entryway

Last week I was able to get started on an entry bench for a couple I met at the Marin Arts Festival last summer.

Here's the design .... it has tapered, curved mahogany legs, an organically shaped wenge stretcher, and a slightly curved figured maple seat.

The shape of the legs is achieved by a technique called coopering. In coopering, the edges of the billets (i.e., sticks) that make up the leg are beveled an both sides before they are edge glued, which results in a curved surface. In this case, to get the fan effect, the billets are both beveled and tapered. To make milling easier I made a dedicated table saw jig that cuts both the taper and the bevel at the same time.

The coopering involved two steps - after the billets were beveled and tapered, a dadoe was plowed along the length of each edge so that when edge-joined a space for splines was created. The splines help maintain alignment and add glue surface for strength.

The curved stretcher was laminated from 1/8" thick solid wenge over a plywood bending form.

Here are the three parts of the base before fairing and final shaping.