Router Plane

Monday, May 30, 2022

Porch Swing/Glider - #12 Completing the Hangers, Arms & Runners, Painting and Final Installation

Drilling the pilot holes in the swing is next.   To make sure the hole is square with the long swing support another guide block is made with one addition.  A foot is added which registers against the bottom of the long swing support.  The photos below show it clamped in place and in use.  Clamping is a little different between the front and back because of the arm support in front.

Next is to install all the hangers in the glider and set the swing in place on a spacer that represents the 3/8” gap between the bottom of the long swing support and the top of the glider stretcher.  With that done the centerline of the just drilled lag bolt holes in the swing gets transferred to the hangers so they will align exactly.  The drawing below shows the lag bolt I am talking about.

With the bottom hanger holes located the swing gets moved out of the way and the lag bolts holding the hangers in place is removed.  Drilling holes in the hangers the lag bolts will pass through is next.  That’s followed by marking the hanger ends for rounding and rough cutting them with the bandsaw.  To clean up the ends the large disk sander is used as shown below.  Last is to route a small radius on the edges completing the hangers.

As a check to make sure all the pieces work together like they are supposed to the hangers, swing and glider are bolted together and given a test swing.  Good news in the swinging action worked great, the seat was comfortable and the final height fit my wife like it was made for her, which it was.

There are two sets of pieces yet to be added.  One is the runners that get attached to the swing and set between the runner guides that have already been attached to the glider.  The other are the arms that go on the top of the glider ends.  The arms are the ones I will tackle first and are shown in the drawing below.

These pieces had been roughly sized long ago.  In checking one of them had twisted some.  I hate when that happens as twist is the worst to remove.    It did take some time with the hand plane to get one flat surface to use as a reference when running it through the thickness sander.  Once done both arms were brought to the same thickness and cut to final size.  Following that the corners get a 3 ¼” arc drawn on them then cut out on the bandsaw.  The big disk sander cleans the cut up with the final smoothing done using a pad sander.  Last touch is to route the edges for a soft touch.  As the arms are attached with only glue, I decided to use three registration pins to hold the arm in place when the clamps are tightened.   The pins are small brads that gets their heads cut off after being driven in about half way.  The top photo shows the brad driven in while the bottom photo shows the head cut off.  To use them the arm is put in place and a mallet drives the arm down onto the headless brads. 

Next the arm gets removed, glue added, the arm put back on using the pins for positioning and clamped.  The pins keep the arm from sliding around as the clamps are tightened.  Here they are glued and clamped in place.

The runners are next and are shown looking up under the swing and down on the glider in the drawing below.

These parts had also been roughed out and were still all flat and true, something to say for well dried red oak.  Now the pieces are trimmed to their near final size and the two parts that make up each of the runners get glued together. 

After the glue cures the pieces are brought down to final thickness using the thickness sander then cut to final dimensions.  The edges get rounded by using the disk sander and/or the router.  One routed corner required some support as shown in the photo to keep it safely in position while being routed.

This is the completed runner with all the routing done.  You can see the faint pencil marks on the ears where the rounding stopped.  That’s to leave a square corner for mounting.  Next it gets installed in the swing with screws run up into the swing’s long support followed by taking them off so they can be painted.

With all the woodworking done and final sanding is completed painting the glider comes next.  The top photo shows the hangers and just completed runners hung so all sides can be painted at once.  The bottom photo shows the glider painted.  Also, in the bottom photo in the center background you can see the painted end panels set on yellow painter’s triangles. 

Laying out the end panel Zia for painting is next.  It’s done in pencil using a combination square that is set to make the lines measured from the panel’s edges.  That way each group of the lines are the same distance from the edge making a symmetrical layout.  The top drawing shows the dimensioned plan and the bottom photo is the laid Zia laid out and ready to paint.

Here is the completed painted bright yellow Zia.  It took two coats to cover and I have to say painting straight lines freehand takes a lot longer than I thought it would.  I had thought about using painter’s tape to give me sharp straight edges but was afraid that since the painted surface was not dead flat I might get some “bleeding” under the tape.

While waiting for the paint to fully dry I did a little cleanup in the shop.  One thing that needed to be emptied was the 32-gallon shop vacuum that was attached to the planer.   Here you can see that it’s about ¾ full of chips and that’s just from all the work done to flatten and clean up the surfaces of the construction lumber.  There is a whole bunch more from the dust collectors on the table saw, bandsaw and disk sander plus airborne dust from the chop saw, hand sanding and the shavings from hand shaping.

Marrying the swing and the glider consists of installing four lag bolts and washers through the hangers.  When all screwed in place they provide the pivot points for the swing assembly to swing back and forth on the glider.  The left drawing has the end glider base assembly hidden to show where the hangers get bolted to the long swing supports.  The center is a front on view and the right drawing shows where the hangers get bolted onto the glider end assemblies.

Once the swing, hangers and glider are all together the Zia painted panels get installed.  Below is the final assembled piece.  I am quite happy with the result.  It is just the right height to set comfortably on for my wife and it does swing very easily.

Here is the finished swing and glider in place on the covered back patio.  It was a lot of fun to build although using construction lumber (2x4's and 2x6's) did require extra time to sort through the lumber yard for good material along with waiting for some months until it dried out.  That said the wood is probably done moving around and is stable.   I do look forward to putting it to use.

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