Twenty-six. (B) Making the bench backrest (cont’d)

Post Twenty-six was getting too lengthy, probably too many photos and not enough text. I’ve been saving two posts as drafts rather than publishing them. I’m thinking now that it doesn’t matter all that much if I go ahead and publish them. Just as tree art is not fine woodworking, my writing in these posts is not fine literature.

After the bark was drawknife off the slab, I scribed around the end of each swan neck for a matching mortise to secure each of them as a tenon. The FR with arrows remind me which edge of the slab is to the front and which end is to the right.

The four swan necks will connect this 80″ long slab with both the backrest and the bench seat. Eventually, the two back legs of the bench will also be joined to this slab.

Each swan neck tenon is now secured in its mortise by a long wood screw inserted and tightened through a pilot hole predrilled through the slab from its flat underside.

With the backrest mounted to the slab, I’m now ready to think about the bench seat, which I hadn’t designed yet or selected its materials. This project has become more of a design-in-progress than I feel comfortable with ….