Porch Swing/Glider - #6 Installing the Slats, Roughing out Parts & Fitting the Arms

The actual installation of the slats starts with one at the front of the seat plus one where the seat and back come together.  After that the second one down from the top gets screwed on.  These three will tie the seat/back braces together square and plumb.  This photo shows the third slat from the top of the back screwed in place at its ends with the center still free to move.  As you can see the slat has a bow that needs to be taken care of.  The bottom left photo is before straightening and the bottom right is where a wedge has been used to take the bow out. 

With the wedge holding the slat straight a screw is driven in to hold it there.  Here is the slat straightened.  The process continues adding one slat at a time straightening as needed.

There are two short slats where the support for the arm and the arm itself get attached to the seat/back braces.  This drawing shows those two slats in blue with the left arm and support removed.  The bottom left photo shows the back slat to be shortened.  It was selected for this location so the knot could be cut off.  The right photo is after it was cut to length.  The short seat slat also had a knot that got cut off.

Work on the top cap is shown in blue in the drawing is next. 

The blank for the cap had flaws on the front left and, on the back, right.   Below the top two photos show the front left before and after cutting the front bevel which got rid of that flaw.  The bottom two photos show the back right before and after where when trimmed to final width the flaw got cut away.

While screwing the slats onto the seat/back braces I noticed that in three places the slats had some knots that ran across the slat and were large enough there was not a lot of material left to provide solid structural support.  Since all the dried material is spoken for and I don’t want to wait several months for more to dry the next option is to take some cutoffs and attach them to the underneath side of the slats to provide for reinforcing and strengthening.  Here are two of them glued with waterproof glue and screwed in place.

With all the slats in place this is what the seat part looks like so far.

With most of the seat done it’s time to layout the rest of the parts and cut them into oversize blanks working around the knots, cracks and so forth.  That took the better part of an afternoon but the real pain was with the twist most of the lumber had developed as it dried.  Some are minor but a couple of pieces took a fair amount of work to flatten.  For me straightening a twisted board is the most time-consuming aggravating problem to take care of.  Doing that, surfacing them to thickness and straightening the edges took the better part of two days.  However, at last all the major part blanks are roughed out.  I hope that the blanks stay flat.  If not, more work will be required.

The next step is to make the arms and their supports.   To verify the measurements a scrap is clamped to the back and a digital level is used to level it.

Laying out the arms is next and the top photo shows that.  As usual there are knots to work around but the layout puts the big one at the top in the waste.  The small one near the right end will go down and not be visible in the finished product.  In the bottom photo the corners and offset area have been rough cut on the bandsaw.  Here a straight edge is clamped to the sander that acts as a guide so I end up with a true edge.

Below the arm is clamped in place with the red arrow pointing to then end point of the round-over.  There is a similar mark on the underside of the arm.  The inset is a closer view of where the round-over ends, everything to the right gets a small radius routed on the edge.

Here is the arm clamped to the workbench along with the router to be used to round-over the edge.  After routing the arms get clamped in place so I can work on their vertical supports. 

Once the vertical support is laid out there is a pretty good size chunk to remove.  The material could be removed with a dado blade but that turns a lot of wood into chips.  An easier way is to start by roughing the waste out on the bandsaw.  That goes quick but leaves a rough irregular surface.  To clean it up the table saw blade is set at the finished cut depth and the rip fence (white fence) set at the notches’ correct width.  Last, a miter fence (black fence) is used to hold the part square to the blade.  To smooth the part is slid left and right across the saw blade then moved forward a little and the left/right pass is repeated.  The process of incremental advancing and side to side movement gives a smooth, true face.

It would be nice if the supports just dropped in place but of course that didn’t happen.  The slat the support abuts to is at an angle so there is a gap at one end.  The bottom photo shows that along with a line parallel to the slat so you can see how much the cut needs to be tapered. 

To cut the taper it’s back to the table saw (top photo) without changing anything except for adding a spacer, in this case some playing cards to move that end of the support out creating an angled cut.  The cards are added one at time until the cut angle matches the slat angle shown in the bottom photo.  I think it took 8 cards to get the right angle shown in the bottom photo.

Because the supports were left a little long cutting them to length is next.  To get the length I could have measured but directly marking is less prone to error especially when the edges are rounded.  Here the left photo shows how a square is used to make sure the support is vertical and a scrap is clamped to the arm to give me the final length.  The right photo is a closer view with the red arrow pointing to the cut line.  After being cut the long vertical edges get routed.

Next Up – Installing the Arms, Testing Seat Height & Disassembly