Making a Garden Bench From an Old Worktop

Reclaimed oak worktop

Reclaimed pine floorboards totalling about 2 metres long

Teak, 2cm by 5 cm by 200 cm

First of all, we needed to cut the legs to length. We are tall in my family so we deliberately cut the legs long. We spent a certain amount of time sitting on things of different heights before we decided the height we wanted the bench at. Subtract the thickness of the top and add a bit for the tenons and then you have the length of the legs. Cut them to length with your method of choice. I only have hand tools so that was my friendly cross cut saw.

Loads of tutorials online on how to cut tenons so I will not do that here but I always cut the tenons before the mortices (I don't think this is as controversial as with dovetails). I have a marking gauge with two pins, which I believe is called a mortice gauge. Marking up tenons that are all the same size means I can leave the pins set and they are the right size when I come to mark the mortices.

I of course didn't do this and cut the first tenon lengthwise along the leg (see the picture of chopping the mortice later to see what I mean). Looking at it after I cut it, I was concerned this wouldn't be strong enough so cut the remaining tenons so they were more square. I then left the mortice gauge set to this so I only needed to reset it once.

Definitely don't do what I do!

So next thing was to sort out the reclaimed worktop.

I decided to sand it back as I didn't know what finish was on there now and if I got back to raw wood I'd know what I needed to do to look after it.

I cheated here as I have a random orbital sander and it really didn't take long. Wasn't looking for a really fine finish so I think I only went to something like 120. It's for a bench that will live outside so it just needed not to snag.

Next was the painful bit. I wanted to shape the ends to it didn't look like someone had just dumped a worktop on some legs, even though I was just dumping a worktop on some legs. I didn't have the power tools to do this with so I ended up using a combination of hand saw and a big gouge to shape it. It was a pain and if you can find someone with a power tool for this part of the job, I'd recommend it.

I ended up reshaping this a few times as I didn't like the first attempts I made and there was a lot of refinement.

Once the shape was ok, I rounded over the top using a spokeshave just to make sure there were no sharp edges to dig in to legs.

So having shaped the top I can now finish the frame for the legs. This just involves putting in stretchers to create the base the bench will sit on.

I did this first as it just makes it easier to manage the pieces and then make sure I cut the mortices in the top in the right place if I make the frame first. Then I can use the frame itself for the markup and not rely on trying to make really accurate measurements.

So I used some old floor boards we had removed from our house for the long stretchers and some pallet wood for the short stretchers. I used through tenons for the long stretchers Same as a normal mortise and tenon except the mortise goes all the way through the leg.

I then used a wedged dowel to pin the tenon through the other side of the leg and glued it all together.

So now the frame for the legs is complete I can use that to mark out the mortices for the framework.

With the top upside down on the workmate, I can put the legs on the top and mark out the position for the mortices. Then it's simply chop them out with a chisel in the normal way. I also have a cheap router plane which is a bit of a pain to set the depth on but is very useful. I used this to flatten the bottom of the mortise.

Having fit the legs, I decided the frame could do with some additional support just to help resist some of the lateral forces. This honestly had nothing to do with my shoddy joinery and a lack of confidence in my mortise work. Honest.

So I don't know what they are officially called, but I decided to put some angled supports on a couple of the joints to spread the pressure. I used some offcuts of teak to make these. I had some vaguely square pieces so I marked a diagonal as a start and then drew a slightly more attractive curved shape and cut it out with a coping saw. These were then glued into place and clamped.

It's worth pointing out the clamping was something of a challenge. Creative use of masking tape solved this and I would heartily recommend you explore the uses of masking tape as a clamp.

Once the glue dried, I used a combination of spokeshave and gouges to soften the sharp edges and put what I considered attractive chamfers on the stretchers and support pieces. I kept the legs square other than the bottoms of the legs. The feet should be chamfered as if they aren't, when the bench is moved there is a risk of them feet catching and causing splits in the legs.

So as I said, my wife is definitely in charge and once I had the bench on its feet, she was happy with the the large, coffee table like look of the bench and found it comfortable not to have a back so she vetoed it.

It means the look of the bench is not quite what I intended as I would have made it a little narrower as I left it that wide to enable me to put a back on it but c'est la vie.

Hope this has been useful.