Two-evening sauna bench
Cedar bench, two evenings, no fasteners visible from the seat. The first evening is breaking down stock and gluing up the seat slab. The second is legs and stretchers. If you have anything resembling a sauna - even just a corner of the porch with a cedar smell - this is the bench that earns its place. It does not flex, it does not creak, and the cedar will turn silver in three summers.
Materials
- Western red cedar, 8/4, roughly twelve board feet
- Cedar 4x4 cutoff for legs, two feet long
- Stainless steel #10 wood screws, 2.5 inch, sixteen of them
- Titebond III
- Cedar wedges, eight, cut from scrap
- Tung oil, half a pint
Tools
- Tablesaw
- Mitersaw or radial-arm saw
- Jointer
- Drill with countersink bit
- Six-inch bench chisel, sharp
- Mallet
- Random-orbit sander
- Combination square
Build it
Break down and let it acclimate
Cut the cedar to rough length the day before you plan to start - cedar moves a lot when it warms up indoors, and gluing it up cold is how you get a banana for a bench. Stack the pieces with stickers between them and leave them somewhere dry overnight.
Glue up the seat slab
Joint and rip three boards to four-inch width. Glue them edge to edge with Titebond III, clamp, scrape the squeeze-out before it cures. Cedar is soft - back off your clamps a quarter turn earlier than you would on hardwood.
Cut the legs and stretchers
From the 4x4, cut two legs to seventeen inches. Mark a long mortise centered in each leg-top to take the seat tenon. Rip a stretcher to one inch by three inches by sixteen inches and shoulder both ends.
Cut tenons on the seat
Mark a tenon centered on each end of the seat slab, length to match the mortise depth. Cut shoulders at the tablesaw, clean up cheeks with the chisel. Test fit. The fit should be snug enough that you can lift the slab by it without the leg falling off.
Drawbore the joint
Drill a 5/16 hole through each leg, perpendicular to the mortise, two inches down from the top. Reassemble dry, transfer the hole into the tenon with a punch, then drill the tenon hole 1/16 closer to the shoulder. When you drive the wedge through, it pulls the joint tight.
Glue up and wedge
Glue the tenons, drive them home, drive the wedges through with a mallet. Saw the wedge tops flush after an hour. Add the stretcher with two stainless screws into pre-drilled, countersunk holes through the leg. Plug the screw holes with cedar wedges if you want to be a show-off.
Sand and oil
120 then 180 grit. Wipe with a damp rag, let it dry, hit it once more at 180. Apply tung oil with a rag, let it sit twenty minutes, wipe off the excess. Cedar drinks oil for the first coat - plan on two more coats over the next week if you want it to stay golden.
Tested on my own porch.
Things that go with this build
A short rail of cabin-adjacent finds. Not the tool list - this is what to look at after you've finished and you're sitting on the porch.
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BIRCH LANE™
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