Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Birthday Benches

I've been in a frenzy of making benches.  I came across a nice pattern for traditional five-board benches and immediately made four of them, out of salvaged lumber, one of which I gave to a friend for his garden.



Benches, I discovered made nice gifts, and as my sweetie had a birthday coming up (yesterday) I set about to make a pair of "higher-end" five-board benches with some Arts and Crafts influence.


And they came out pretty nice




I also wanted to decorate them.  Using my soldering iron...


I burned this scene of blackbirds on a limb into the first.


Into the second one I routed a traditional Roycroft design, in this case, Dard Hunter's beautiful 
geometric roses.  

                              
                                 The Dremel Trio (a new purchase) really expedited the process.



Side-by-side the slight variations in construction are apparent.



I colored the roses with watered down acrylic paint,



and followed that with six coats of spar-varnish...



which locked in the color and weatherproofed the benches.


The result was both pretty to look at...





and well received by the birthday girl.



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