Porch Swing/Glider - #1 Getting Started & Making Templates

Awhile back we added a covered porch on the south-ish side of the house.  It has proved to be a good investment as with some shade and a ceiling fan the patio has become much more usable.  We have a table and some chairs but I wanted to add a little more seating.  Reviewing the options, I remembered a swing/glider combination I had made in about 1986 that was comfortable and easy to swing, well at least part of the time it was easy to swing.  While building it during the winter, I didn’t fully take into account how the changes humidity would affect the tolerances in the swinging mechanism.  It worked great in the spring, fall and winter but not so well in the summer.  During the summer when things swelled up with the central Illinois humidity and while still comfortable it didn’t swing.  Here a photo taken in early 1987 with it on the front deck.

Pulling out the old plans I drew new ones up in SketchUp making some changes to the mechanism tolerances and beefing up some of the structural elements.  While here in the desert we don’t see anything near the humidity swings like in Illinois I wasn’t going to take any chances.  Below is a rendering of the project.  Not sure about the final color but there is a lot of blue and turquoise painted pieces here.

Once the rendering was done, I made the exploded diagram below to help work out assembly.

The exploded diagram is followed by the cutting plan below so I could get materials and deciding on that was more of an exercise than anticipated.

As this is going to be an outside piece my first choice of materials was Cypress but could not find any within a reasonable driving distance and I am really uncomfortable with ordering it in sight unseen.  Pressure treated material is another alternative but I passed on that for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s almost impossible to get it without a zillion knots or even remotely dry.  When it does dry the end result is almost always twisted, cupped and bowed.  Not my idea of the ideal material for this project.  After taking into account the piece will be under a roof and protected from the little rain, we get I decided to go with regular Douglas fir construction lumber.  What clinched the decision was the Maloof style rocker I built in 2015 out construction lumber that has been in a more exposed location under the front porch roof.  It looks as good now as it did when I set it out there more than six years ago plus everything is still straight and true.

With the material decision made it was off to the big box lumber yard to spend hours sorting through their material.  I took a long time to find boards that were straight grained, flat, true, mostly free of knots and didn’t have the pith running through it.  Most of the selected boards were either rift or quarter sawn but to paraphrase a fairy tale I had to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince.  Once home the boards were checked with a moisture meter and most ran from 8% to 12% moisture.  This is too high so they were stacked with spacers to allow free air flow and left to dry.  I also wanted to see if they were going to stay flat and true or twist around like a pretzel.  That was seven months ago.  A few days ago, when I checked them the moisture content was down to less than 5% which is good and most of them were still in decent shape.  The key words here are “most” and “decent”.  Nearly all had a little cup which is easy to get rid of, a few had some minor curving or bow that when cut into shorter pieces I can straighten but a couple had multiple problems.  This photo shows the two that may not be salvageable as they are going every which way.  I did get a couple of extras just in case so think everything will work out.

The project begins by working on the swing itself.  The glider assembly is made completely separate and will come later.  The first part of the swing gets under way by making the three seat/back braces that most everything will attach to.  They are shown in blue here and each are made from two pieces joined with a half lap joint.

Since I had already drawn the project out the parts that make up the braces could be printed out full size and used as a pattern.  Because the parts are bigger than an 8 ½ x 11” sheet of paper they get printed out on two sheets with reference marks for alignment.  In the photo below the left sheet has been cut along the base reference line.

In this photo the two sheets are aligned to a straight edge and the center reference lines are correctly spaced out.  The C clamps are just for weight to hold the sheets in place while they get taped together.

Once taped together they are taped to a scrap piece of ¼” plywood with masking tape as shown in the top photo.  The next step is using the masking tape as a hinge a fine coat of adhesive is sprayed on both the paper and plywood.  The paper is then flipped back into place as shown in the bottom photo.

Here in the bench vice buried between the wood planks wrapped in plastic to keep them from sticking together are the two patterns.  I will leave them overnight for the glue to bond.

Next the right sides get trimmed to the pattern line as does the bottom and any other straight lines.  That’s been done in the top photo.  After that a jig saw with a fine blade is used to cut the curves a little oversize.

A 12” disk sander is used to smooth the edges and outside curves bringing them down to the pattern line while the oscillating drum sander takes care of the inside curves.  Final blending of the transitions is done by hand sanding.

Here are the two patterns ready to go.

Next Up – Shaping the Seat/Back Braces