I love this bench but I don't love the
way 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 walk
into our living room just past the entry. It has kind of turned
into our dumping grounds. we walk in we set our stuff on it backpacks purses laptops.
We throw our shoes under it on top of that we don't really have a
good place to set our mail or charge our phones we usually end up doing that on our
kitchen counter I really do love this bench i'm sure
some of you recognize it it's a nelson platform bench produced by
herman miller i remember reading once that Nelson originally designed it for
his office and the reason it's slatted instead of a solid surface is because he
didn't want people stopping in his office and getting too comfortable i sat on it a few times mission
accomplished mr. Nelson I was lucky enough to find this one
being thrown away by a library it's an actual herman miller piece not a
knockoff.
It was pretty beat up when I found it so i had to do a little work on the
legs but it was well worth the two or three hours spent on it i figured i could build something here
that can address all of our issues the only real limitation is size. I
don't want something that is going to stick out too far we want to keep it nice and open for
traffic also I don't want to build something with just function of mine basically aesthetics are my number one
priority and utility is my number two priority I came up with a few ideas before
settling on this one this one doesn't really address the backpack coat hanging
issue 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 two
types of wood walnut for the frame and maple for the
cabinets and shelves the cabinet shelves will be made from
maple plywood with hardwood edging to cover up the plywood lines I've actually never used maple plywood
before but i can't imagine it's much different than any other type of plywood i started off by breaking the plywood
down into roughly the size of the finished pieces when I break down full
sheets use my tracks off because it would be way too hard and dangerous to
try to balance them on my table saw I was able to get everything out of just
one sheet of plywood the project got off to kind of shaky
start when I cut the pieces about an inch narrower than I had initially
intended was upset for about a minute but then I remembered the narrower the
thing is the better it's going to be for traffic so i chalked it up to a blessing
in disguise and moved on in general I try to keep myself
organized while I'm building there's just something about working in
a clean space that makes me happier so every once in a while when things
start getting out of hand I kind of hit the reset button after i was done organizing myself, I
cut a bunch of strip of hardwood to edge the plywood I cut these about a quarter inch thick
and then glued them on I leave the strip's a little proud so that
I can trim them flush after everything is dried the cabinet is made of six pieces the top bottom two sides a back and a
vertical partition i started off by cutting miters along
all the edges of the carcass pieces this is just your basic 45 degree angle
so that I end up with a rectangular cabinet the reason I'm doing this is so that it
hides the ply lines where the edges are glued together the cabinet is about 54 inches long which
is more than my table saw can handle so i cut the miters on the long pieces
using the tracks on with the pieces cut the final dimension
I cut a bit of joinery before gluing up first a rabbet along the back
of all the pieces to inset the back panel and next a pair of thin grooves
that will hold some sliding doors the only real trick here is cutting the
grooves for the doors on the top piece deeper than the grooves on the bottom
piece this way you'll be able to insert the
door 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 raising
and lowering my blade it doesn't need to be dead on accurate
just about the same next I'm going to put a dado in the top
and bottom pieces to hold the vertical partition this will help keep the box a
little bit more rigid first I found and marked out my cut on the center of each
panel then I made the cut using a router the
reason I'm using a router instead of a dado blade is because i don't want to
cut to all the way through the router leaves a rounded edge but
I'll square it off using the chisel then I assembled everything the miters are reinforced with dominoes
which also make the glue-up way easier probably stronger to do a butt joint
that was reinforced here but the miters look better in my opinion and they're
going to be plenty strong if this were a box people would be
standing and jumping on, say a bed then i might worry but it's not so I'm not next I finalize
the size of the vertical partitions and glued it in.
I somehow forgot to film
myself doing this but here I'm doing something more important prepping for the piece a little trick I
learned after making a few boxes out of plywood is that while plywood is usually
pretty flat when you're using long pieces it often bows slightly one way I always
make my boxes so that the concave side is on the outside and the convex side is
on the inside basically it bends inwards this way
when I put the vertical partition in it holds the piece perfectly flat
eliminating the bow here what you're watching me do is make a wedge piece
that is cut to the exact size of the inside of the carcass on the ends then I wedge this in the center while I
make the vertical partition if that makes sense now with the cabinet
complete I cut and attach the back panel I actually use
two pieces for the back panel because I didn't have one piece that was long
enough you can't tell from the front though A.) because there will be doors and
B.) because they meet behind the vertical partition finally I cut my doors these are coming
from quarter inch maple plywood.
I'm not going to put any handles on them just a
little negative space for a finger grab now you can see how the doors go in and
out with the box and shelves out of the way
i turn my attention to the walnut frame i started by figuring out how much wood
I needed to use in order to get all of my pieces then I milled everything to about an
inch thick and cut all of my pieces into blanks I don't think that's the right term but
basically I mean a piece of wood that is roughly the finished size and has all
90-degree corners every time you see me using the miter
gauge in this project I'm either cutting something at zero
degrees to make a 90-degree corner or at eight degrees that's the angle of the vertical pieces
in quotation marks because they form an 82 degree angle with the ground the first piece I'm working on here is
the tops and bottoms of the two sides the little short pieces with the tapers
that kind of look like the wings on the side of the flash's helmet I marked out all of my angles then I made
the tapered cut on my bandsaw and cleaned it up on the sander next I marked and cut out the
aforementioned 82 degrees vertical pieces with those six pieces cut two top
two bottom and two verticals I started to lay out the joinery.
I'm
going to use half laps to join all of these together when i make this type of
joinery I make all of my marks by actually putting the pieces together and
drawing lines where I'm going to need to cut I could figure out the angles but I
don't even bother then at my table side just line up the marks to my miter slot
and 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 on
the face that i'm going to cut since it's confusing with a lot of mirrored
pieces next I marked out all of the dadoes for
the vertical pieces each will have three one for each of the shelves and another
really big one to hold the cabinet then it was back to dado city for this piece I took a sort of build as
I assemble approach towards the end basically the piece can stand with just
two legs the cabinet and the shelves it would just be a little wobbly and the shelves
would be more likely this sag in the middle since there wouldn't be anything
to support them to fix this problems there's a whole back structure but I
thought it would be easier to actually assemble everything and then build the
back structure around the piece it actually wasn't that easy so I might
have been wrong to do this who knows in any case at this point i
glued up the legs and attach the cabinet and the two shelves the cabinet is glued and screwed in you
can't see the screws unless you open the doors and look for them so I'm fine with that and the shelves
are just glued in from there i was able to stand the
entire unit up so that i could take measurements for and cut the long pieces
that run horizontally along the top and bottom of the back of the unit and from
there I can make the vertical piece that runs up the back center to kind of tie
everything together and keep the shelves from sagging once i glued this piece in
the entire unit went from wobbly to solid then it was on to the detail work Nelson is quoted as having rhetorically
asked what is the crowning glory of your civilization the symbol as clear a
statement as the pyramids the Parthenon the cathedrals and his answer was junk
junk 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 the
crowning glory of our civilization but it might be the most honest portrayal of
it nobody stages junk, it just is builds over
years of living curiosity's discovered an abandoned
there remains our junk maybe Nelson had a different meaning
when he spoke of junk something less literal that i'm imagining in any case he was a brilliant designer
and something for people like me to aspire to and at the end of the day if you think
anything that I'm saying this video this project any of this is junk then I thank you hey guys thanks for watching the build
video i hope that you enjoyed it since you stuck around I feel like I can
kind of assume one of two things either a you did really enjoy it or be you just
have this unquenchable hatred for me and you're just watching this and just
freaking steaming right now so hopefully the former is true and assuming that it
is I have a simple favor to ask of you
first if you haven't already go ahead and hit that subscribe button which is
right about here and if you've already done that maybe
you go ahead and hit the like button which is right there and finally and this part is in all
seriousness if you are enjoying these videos what I would ask of you is to
tell somebody about it um you know right now i'm not making any
money off the channel maybe that'll change someday in the future but what
I'm really focusing on right now is growing the channel and I need your help
to do that right now I kind of you my currency as my subscribers when I see
that count go up that's what really motivates me and keeps me going and you
know I get a lot of messages from people saying that a friend turned them on the
channel or whatever and that really is my favorite thing to hear i just love
when I hear that because it means that you guys are liking it and you're
recommending it to your friends and I just appreciate it so much when you do
that and I would encourage you to keep doing that so you know everybody just think about
person in their life maybe it's a friend that likes woodworking or somebody
that's into design or graphic designer just kind of an artsy person you know
everybody has that person in your life and what I would encourage you to do is
tell that person tell me about the channel and you know let them decide for
themselves maybe they'll be into it maybe they
won't we can't really control that but we can control at least getting it in
front of them that one time so please I beg of you to please do that and help
this thing keep growing I want to keep it growing and see where it goes and see
what it can turn into and that's really it you know it's not going to be hard on
your part it will take a couple minutes but I would really appreciate it so much
so thank you for doing that for me and you know i'll keep making these videos
i'll keep putting the time in and coming up with new ideas and i hope that you
guys will continue to support me in the way that you have so far I'm thank you so much for everything
thank you for watching and I'll see you next time