i love this bench but i don't love theway we use this bench it deserves better and we deserve better i'm sorry bench it's not you it's me so this bench sits right where you walkinto our living room just past the entry. it has kind of turnedinto our dumping grounds. we walk in we
the handyman's guide essential woodworking tools and techniques pdf, set our stuff on it backpacks purses laptops. we throw our shoes under it on top of that we don't really have agood place to set our mail or charge our phones
we usually end up doing that on ourkitchen counter i really do love this bench i'm suresome of you recognize it it's a nelson platform bench produced byherman miller i remember reading once that nelson originally designed it forhis office and the reason it's slatted instead of a solid surface is because hedidn't want people stopping in his office and getting too comfortable i sat on it a few times missionaccomplished mr. nelson i was lucky enough to find this onebeing thrown away by a library it's an actual herman miller piece not aknockoff. it was pretty beat up when i found
it so i had to do a little work on thelegs but it was well worth the two or three hours spent on it i figured i could build something herethat can address all of our issues the only real limitation is size. idon't want something that is going to stick out too far we want to keep it nice and open fortraffic also i don't want to build something with just function of mine basically aesthetics are my number onepriority and utility is my number two priority
i came up with a few ideas beforesettling on this one this one doesn't really address the backpack coat hangingissue but i'll take it one piece at a time and focus on this guy for now for this build i'm going to use twotypes of wood walnut for the frame and maple for thecabinets and shelves the cabinet shelves will be made frommaple plywood with hardwood edging to cover up the plywood lines i've actually never used maple plywoodbefore but i can't imagine it's much different than any other type of plywood
i started off by breaking the plywooddown into roughly the size of the finished pieces when i break down fullsheets use my tracks off because it would be way too hard and dangerous totry to balance them on my table saw i was able to get everything out of justone sheet of plywood the project got off to kind of shakystart when i cut the pieces about an inch narrower than i had initiallyintended was upset for about a minute but then i remembered the narrower thething is the better it's going to be for traffic so i chalked it up to a blessingin disguise and moved on in general i try to keep myselforganized while i'm building
there's just something about working ina clean space that makes me happier so every once in a while when thingsstart getting out of hand i kind of hit the reset button after i was done organizing myself, icut a bunch of strip of hardwood to edge the plywood i cut these about a quarter inch thickand then glued them on i leave the strip's a little proud so thati can trim them flush after everything is dried the cabinet is made of six pieces
the top bottom two sides a back and avertical partition i started off by cutting miters alongall the edges of the carcass pieces this is just your basic 45 degree angleso that i end up with a rectangular cabinet the reason i'm doing this is so that ithides the ply lines where the edges are glued together the cabinet is about 54 inches long whichis more than my table saw can handle so i cut the miters on the long piecesusing the tracks on with the pieces cut the final dimensioni cut a bit of joinery before
gluing up first a rabbet along the backof all the pieces to inset the back panel and next a pair of thin groovesthat will hold some sliding doors the only real trick here is cutting thegrooves for the doors on the top piece deeper than the grooves on the bottompiece this way you'll be able to insert thedoor by sliding it up to the top and clearing the bottom because i'm cutting two of them, i need to go back and forth cutting the front one and the back one i did exactly one rotation for raisingand lowering my blade it doesn't need to be dead on accuratejust about the same
next i'm going to put a dado in the topand bottom pieces to hold the vertical partition this will help keep the box alittle bit more rigid first i found and marked out my cut on the center of eachpanel then i made the cut using a router thereason i'm using a router instead of a dado blade is because i don't want tocut to all the way through the router leaves a rounded edge buti'll square it off using the chisel then i assembled everything the miters are reinforced with dominoeswhich also make the glue-up way easier probably stronger to do a butt jointthat was reinforced here but the miters
look better in my opinion and they'regoing to be plenty strong if this were a box people would bestanding and jumping on, say a bed then i might worry but it's not so i'm not next i finalizethe size of the vertical partitions and glued it in. i somehow forgot to filmmyself doing this but here i'm doing something more important prepping for the piece a little trick ilearned after making a few boxes out of plywood is that while plywood is usuallypretty flat when you're using long pieces
it often bows slightly one way i alwaysmake my boxes so that the concave side is on the outside and the convex side ison the inside basically it bends inwards this waywhen i put the vertical partition in it holds the piece perfectly flateliminating the bow here what you're watching me do is make a wedge piecethat is cut to the exact size of the inside of the carcass on the ends then i wedge this in the center while imake the vertical partition if that makes sense now with the cabinetcomplete i cut and attach the back panel i actually usetwo pieces for the back panel because i
didn't have one piece that was longenough you can't tell from the front though a.) because there will be doors andb.) because they meet behind the vertical partition finally i cut my doors these are comingfrom quarter inch maple plywood. i'm not going to put any handles on them just alittle negative space for a finger grab now you can see how the doors go in andout with the box and shelves out of the wayi turn my attention to the walnut frame i started by figuring out how much woodi needed to use in order to get all of my pieces
then i milled everything to about aninch thick and cut all of my pieces into blanks i don't think that's the right term butbasically i mean a piece of wood that is roughly the finished size and has all90-degree corners every time you see me using the mitergauge in this project i'm either cutting something at zerodegrees to make a 90-degree corner or at eight degrees that's the angle of the vertical piecesin quotation marks because they form an 82 degree angle with the ground
the first piece i'm working on here isthe tops and bottoms of the two sides the little short pieces with the tapersthat kind of look like the wings on the side of the flash's helmet i marked out all of my angles then i madethe tapered cut on my bandsaw and cleaned it up on the sander next i marked and cut out theaforementioned 82 degrees vertical pieces with those six pieces cut two toptwo bottom and two verticals i started to lay out the joinery. i'mgoing to use half laps to join all of these together when i make this type ofjoinery i make all of my marks by
actually putting the pieces together anddrawing lines where i'm going to need to cut i could figure out the angles but idon't even bother then at my table side just line up the marks to my miter slotand lock the miter gauge down so that i know my lines in the blade or parallel i also always make sure to put an x onthe face that i'm going to cut since it's confusing with a lot of mirroredpieces next i marked out all of the dadoes forthe vertical pieces each will have three one for each of the shelves and anotherreally big one to hold the cabinet
then it was back to dado city for this piece i took a sort of build asi assemble approach towards the end basically the piece can stand with justtwo legs the cabinet and the shelves it would just be a little wobbly and the shelveswould be more likely this sag in the middle since there wouldn't be anythingto support them to fix this problems there's a whole back structure but ithought it would be easier to actually assemble everything and then build theback structure around the piece it actually wasn't that easy so i mighthave been wrong to do this who knows in any case at this point iglued up the legs and attach the cabinet
and the two shelves the cabinet is glued and screwed in youcan't see the screws unless you open the doors and look for them so i'm fine with that and the shelvesare just glued in from there i was able to stand theentire unit up so that i could take measurements for and cut the long piecesthat run horizontally along the top and bottom of the back of the unit and fromthere i can make the vertical piece that runs up the back center to kind of tieeverything together and keep the shelves from sagging once i glued this piece inthe entire unit went from wobbly to
solid then it was on to the detail work nelson is quoted as having rhetoricallyasked what is the crowning glory of your civilization the symbol as clear astatement as the pyramids the parthenon the cathedrals and his answer was junkjunk is the rusty lovely brilliant symbol of the dying years of your time junk is your ultimate landscape i don't know that our junk is thecrowning glory of our civilization but it might be the most honest portrayal ofit nobody stages junk, it just is builds overyears of living
curiosity's discovered an abandonedthere remains our junk maybe nelson had a different meaningwhen he spoke of junk something less literal that i'm imagining in any case he was a brilliant designerand something for people like me to aspire to and at the end of the day if you thinkanything that i'm saying this video this project any of this is junk then i thank you hey guys thanks for watching the buildvideo i hope that you enjoyed it
since you stuck around i feel like i cankind of assume one of two things either a you did really enjoy it or be you justhave this unquenchable hatred for me and you're just watching this and justfreaking steaming right now so hopefully the former is true and assuming that itis i have a simple favor to ask of youfirst if you haven't already go ahead and hit that subscribe button which isright about here and if you've already done that maybeyou go ahead and hit the like button which is right there and finally and this part is in allseriousness if you are enjoying these
videos what i would ask of you is totell somebody about it um you know right now i'm not making anymoney off the channel maybe that'll change someday in the future but whati'm really focusing on right now is growing the channel and i need your helpto do that right now i kind of you my currency as my subscribers when i seethat count go up that's what really motivates me and keeps me going and youknow i get a lot of messages from people saying that a friend turned them on thechannel or whatever and that really is my favorite thing to hear i just lovewhen i hear that because it means that you guys are liking it and you'rerecommending it to your friends and i
just appreciate it so much when you dothat and i would encourage you to keep doing that so you know everybody just think aboutperson in their life maybe it's a friend that likes woodworking or somebodythat's into design or graphic designer just kind of an artsy person you knoweverybody has that person in your life and what i would encourage you to do istell that person tell me about the channel and you know let them decide forthemselves maybe they'll be into it maybe theywon't we can't really control that but we can control at least getting it infront of them that one time so please i
beg of you to please do that and helpthis thing keep growing i want to keep it growing and see where it goes and seewhat it can turn into and that's really it you know it's not going to be hard onyour part it will take a couple minutes but i would really appreciate it so muchso thank you for doing that for me and you know i'll keep making these videosi'll keep putting the time in and coming up with new ideas and i hope that youguys will continue to support me in the way that you have so far i'm thank you so much for everythingthank you for watching and i'll see you
next time
