A country house with a plot opens up many opportunities for its original design and improvement. Having a large amount of dry lumber available, I decided to make a bench of solid oak.
Selecting a suitable log, using a chainsaw sawed it lengthwise into two halves. The core turned out to be a bit rotten, but this prompted me to an original solution.
Bench assembly
Having removed the bark from the workpiece (it turned out to be a hassle), he hollowed out the rotten middle to solid wood. After polishing, a wavy groove is obtained.
As a stand for the bench I used wooden logs, of course, also from oak. He also removed the bark and polished the wood.
On the back of the bench, I cut out a V-shaped recess and a little bit hedged stand blocks, so that they had a large area of contact with the ground and the seat.
Now is the time to assemble the bench in a single design. To fix the seat on the steps, I drilled 4 through holes in each groove. I inserted metal studs into them, after which I put a wooden delivery on top and hit it with a sledgehammer to get symmetrical marks where to drill holes on the support. Then he poured wood glue into the holes and inserted wooden studs (dowels). Seat on the steps also missed the glue and planted the upper part of the bench.
Bench finish
I decided to fill the recess in the seat with acorns and fill it with transparent epoxy. No sooner said than done! In the forest, my son and I gathered a lot of acorns, sorted and cleaned them, and then dried in the oven.
To prevent the resin from leaking out of the groove, I covered the ends with a clamp. As a substrate, I used a plastic strip, richly greased with petroleum jelly, so that it would not stick to the resin.
He filled the groove in the bench with acorns and filled it with epoxy. He did the filling in several passes (kneading in small portions) so that the resin solidified faster. When the groove was completely filled with acorns and resin, he also treated the top of the seat.
Finishing finish
When the epoxy was completely dry, I completely covered the bench with two layers of varnish, after drying of which it was completely ready for operation in the open.
