Recently I had some friends ask me if I could make them a bench for their front porch with one catch, it had to be VERY strong. Not the hardest demand to have when building something we do like to go above and beyond around here so while I was looking around trying to get an idea for what to build I started looking at a little table I made for the arm of my couch. This little table uses faux finger joints and I started to think that if I did that with 2x4s then it would be crazy strong.
That little table was make with all left over scraps so its a little beat up but you can see those joints on there and how strong they should be. Before I go any farther I have to mention that the design for the little guy came from Steve Ramsey at WoodWorking for Mere Mortals, and I totally tweeted the picture of these 2 projects together and he responded…awesome!
With this design in mind the next question was size, for this project it wasn’t going to be too big so I just went about 4 foot wide by 14 inches tall. The construction is probably the easiest thing to do here but the key is to either buy your material with a squared off edge or run it through your table saw and knock off the rounded part so its square. I chose the latter.
Being that a 2×4 is neither 2 nor 4 inches I decided I was going to go with creating 3 inch boards taking 1/4 of an inch off both sides. Deciding on the dimension is important because you need to know that before cutting down your stock because every other board mates differently. So every other board has to be either 6 inches longer or shorter across the top and 3 inches longer or shorter across the bottom.
Once the stock is cut down to the lengths and the corners are rounded off its time to hope you have enough glue…cause it takes a lot. I made the decision with this to use 2 inch brad nails as I went along. I did not use them for strength because really the offer none, but what it did for me was allow me to tack the boards together after the first row and keep working rather than wait for the glue to dry. This method makes for a MUCH faster assembly. Aside from that little trick its as simple as gluing alternating boards together and then on the last one rather than using nails (because we don’t want to see nail heads) add a couple cull boards and clamp tight. Yes I did use more than one clamp but that would have made a jumbled up mess of a picture.
After this the assembly is DONE! All that is left if to sand it smooth and even and apply your finishes. When I was done I put on every piece of weight I could find….including me. I am going to make the guess that there was a good 700+ lbs on there it stood up to it no problem.