Entranceway Bench

My name is Jonathan Guercio, I'm a Student currently taking Digital Fabrication and Design at Selkirk College in Trail BC!

That being said, if you know me, you probably know something like a bench is a bit out of my wheel house. You'd be correct. And that my humans, is exactly the point!

Most of my projects stem from pure practicality. Even my drone project done previously HERE as cool as it looks, looks were not a single consideration when designing.

So what are these pictures you see here in the intro? That is a headphone stand, which isn't a bench as some might observe. But this headphone stand was my first stab at actually designing something with an aesthetic intention. The constraints were VERY tight, and I only had a single chance to cut it. That project kicked my butt. I pushed myself and the machines to the very limit to get it done, and there definitely some rough spots that show.

Now with that headphone stand done, I wanted to take things farther. As usual, this Instructable is more of an account of what happened, and how I went about this project, more than a tutorial on how to make one yourself.

Here we go

Our challenge was to use a single sheet of ply (spoilers I used 1.5 sheets)

and CNC (I used a Shopbot Alpha in this case)

Our assignment problem definition?

Design an object for sitting

Yep that was the actual problem our class was presented with. But this was very carefully worded.

So, we are to design a chair? You absolutely can, but no. And that's the point. This problem is as specific but open as possible. It is a prompt forcing you to make something for sitting, but in no way railroading you into a chair. Our class had a wide variety of projects. Mine is of course the entrance way bench, but we also had a fidgeting stool, a full blown reading nest, a Sim racing rig, and heck even a toilet stool.

The only restriction: To only use a single sheet of ply

I live in a VERY small apartment, everything in this apartment needs to have a use, and preferably more than one at that. So the thinking began. I had a shoe rack, but noticed I ALWAYS sit down on the ground to put my shoes on. Not sure why, but perhaps it's an old behavior I've had since I was small. Of course the idea fell into place!

Something that I could sit on, maybe hold the morning chaos, and of course shoes. The entrance way bench was born.

For inspiration, thankfully I didn't have to look very far. Our instructor has quite the portfolio, working on some very very large projects. One of the slightly smaller less known ones, is this desk you see a picture of here. This desk is in the flagship Alaska Airlines lounge in the Seattle Airport. It is huge, and made almost completely of plywood stacked together and then CNC'd to create that incredible look. I knew I wanted to try this given our restriction of plywood.

So what ever I did, I wanted that stacked plywood in the project somehow.

You have to start somewhere, and simple sketches are always the best. They allow you to get your ideas visually onto page and work out issues before really lifting a finger

I wanted to strike a good mid-century modern look, but making something "timeless" isn't exactly easy. What I don't have pictures of are the books I read to try and get a better understanding. I quickly made some sketches, and some simple shapes in Fusion360.

I took those simple shapes and cut them out of cardboard. This allowed me to see them "in person" and view them from a distance shown in the pictures

After seeing those shapes in person, I quickly decided as nice as a simple bench like that would look, ultimately wasn't very practical.

I sat down with my instructor and (like always) had amazing advice.

He asked something very simple. "You may have a shoe bench, but how are you actually going to use it?"

I missed a very crucial step, actually thinking out my use case. How would it actually be used? It's easy enough to think of "Well, I need a seat and shoe storage". I mean, yeah....sure, but that doesn't go into enough detail.

How big does the actual sitting part need to be?

How many shoes?

What kind of shoes?

Boots?

Do you want more than just that functionality?

What space restrictions do you have? (silly I know, but even in my ridiculously small apartment, and very specific place I needed this bench to go, I genuinely didn't think of this)

Why does it have to my symmetrical? (this question absolutely threw me for a loop)

These are all very important questions I didn't think about. Normally I'm very good at thinking about these little details and usually leaving the ascetic design on the back burner. However with this project, I had it completely backwards to push myself. In focusing on ascetics, I completely overlooked basic functionality. It seems like such an incredibly silly mistake, especially for me, but this is what happens when you are trying something new.

So a new direction was needed. Now this isn't to say the previous step was pointless. I still learned the design shape/direction I wanted to go. You can see the shape similarities to the prototypes from before

I started by adding more storage. I realized if it's just a single person (99% of the time me) sitting on it at a time, and for only maybe 20-30 seconds a day, a big nice bench probably isn't needed. So how small can I get the actual seat part?

Funny enough, I looked up the average size of a small airline seat, and took 1" off the width. I figured airline seats are small and I could go even smaller. Only if I had enough space to briefly sit.

The next and much more important step was to determine how high I needed the seat to be. My instructor recommended I call the girlie and ask what her favorite chair was in the apartment. She said the old Quizno's chair we have in the kitchen. I asked her to measure the seat height from the ground. It was 17.5" inches. However knowing the use case of the seat I was making, I decided to lower the seat by 1". The thinking was to make it easier to reach down when you are putting on shoes.

This iteration as you can see was much closer to the final product. But there was definitely still somethings missing. I haven't sorted out the height of the shelves yet, and at this point, the top of the taller part didn't have a use yet. Another quick sit down with the instructor put me on the perfect track from there

Refining from the previous iteration was fairly quick!

I cut down the umber of shelves and respaced them. Very bottom shelf is good for shoes that are a bit shorter. Middle shelf is great for commonly used shoes and even a pair of slight taller shoes/boots, and the very top shelf was perfect for the shoes I wear every single day

This iteration also had one VERY important change. A small shelf on top of the taller portion. This shelf is intended for the "morning choas". Somewhere I can put my coffee or other things down when I put on my shoes, or something I can quickly set things down when I get back to close the door and take off my shoes. In this iteration I was attempting to be stylistic with how the stacked plywood was cut, every second piece is cut shorter. However this cardboard prototype doesn't show very well

You can also see the big stylistic refinement in the overall shape of the bench, adding much more dramatic angles to really drive the look I wanted. At this stage I started thinking about the actual assembly. I decided each "hoop" would actually be 2 layers for strength. I wanted the outer hoop a single piece, and the inner hoop to be broken up into pieces for better nesting

I then cut a scale prototype from cardboard and brought it home to see the bench in it's "actual" environment. As it turns out, this was by far the most important part of this design stage, and was very pivotal for the prototyping stage. I discussed the design with the girlie and we came to many conclusions

The first, is I realized the upper shelf wasn't very practical. If I was really to cut every second sheet shorter than the next, setting smaller objects like keys, or even things like a coffee mug could be very unstable.

Second, and MUCH more importantly.............. It was completely the wrong size. I had the previous iteration right at the edge of what would fit in my specific place, but that was before I pushed and pulled the shape into the dramatic angles for style. It was now FAR too long, nearly 10 inches. This would, as it turns out, be a huge pain to solve.

(I didn't take photos of the redesign, I wasn't planning on writing an Instructable, these photos were for the design brief that was due with the project)

The photo you see here is the final prototype before full scale cut. This prototype was cut out of 1/4" ply, and of course 1/3rd scale as we would be using 3/4" ply

As you can see there was quite a lot of changes. First thing you will notice is how much smaller the top tray is. This is where most of the length was recovered. I ultimately decided if I was just putting keys and a coffee up there for a few seconds, it really only had to be as big as keys and coffee. You will also notice I took out the stylistic cutting of the shelf too. This was replaced with 2 taller pieces on the outside, and 5 smaller pieces making up the inside. This would creat a nice flat tray, with some lips to keep everything in

You can also see some smaller details in place now. Where the joints would be for the inner hoop, holes for locating dowels, how the seat and tray would actually connect things like that

I wasn't too too happy with the style anymore, although I still think it looks fantastic, it is now missing that nice long dramatic shape, but due to the extremely tight size restrictions I had, this is the result. To be clear, I've still very excited with it

But of course, my Instructor had just one more question to ask me (he really likes pushing me hard which is great). "You see these joints? (referring to the inner hoop joints) how can you make these pretty?"

One more rabbit hole

First step was to cut of course!

Remember the 1 sheet of ply restriction? This is exactly the point where that went directly out the window. In theory, the hoops, and shelves could fit in a single sheet...... I didn't take into account the 32 (yes thirty two) individual pieces that made up the seat and tray. 25 for the seat, and 7 for the tray. Thankfully, we were allowed to "barter" with our classmates for their unused ply. So with a "donation" of half a sheet form a classmate, I cut out the seat and tray pieces

It was time to glue the 32 pieces of the seat and tray together. Honestly, this wasn't so bad

It was quite simple, apply glue t each piece, stick together and slide until aligned, I then took a nail gun and put in 2 short nails to hold the pieces in place while the glue dried, just repeat this 30 more times!

Sanding these was probably the most interesting part of the project oddly enough however. Of course I'm not perfect, so the pieces weren't PERFECTLY lined up, which was expected. What wasn't expected was the monumental amount of sanding it would take, but for reasons you might not expect.

As it turns out, ply wood isn't a single piece of wood, I bet you didn't see that coming. But this does come with some interesting properties that can make finishing work difficult. Since the layers are facing different directions, so is the grain. When sanding they can actually sand at different rates, so as you smooth out one part, you are also creating a hole or rough part at the same time. Almost making an endless cycle. I knew I had LOTS of wood to sand through with these pieces, but I did eventually give up as I felt I was getting knowwhere

Earlier on I did a test finishing with some scrap pieces from earlier test cuts. I glued the 2 pieces together in the same way, sanded and put on a nice satin finish varathane. It turned out great. So I applied the same to the seat, very lightly sanded, and put on another coat. 3 coats later, it wasn't turning out how I wanted.

But I realized why. On my test piece, I accidentally put a coat of varathane that was MUCH too thick. (This was my first time ever using varathane, so I really had no idea what I was doing) To fix this mistake, I let it dry and did some serious sanding before putting on a thin coat. As it turns out, this did something interesting. It "glued" the different grains in place, making them easy to sand, therefore easy to level out. After this discovery, I left the seat and tray with their 3 coats until the next day, and went crazy with the sander and 150 grit. This worked like a charm! I had a nice smooth surface now (after working down to 600 grit) to start the light varathane coats over again. 3 coats later, you can only barely feel where each layer of the ply is, it's a really neat feeling!

The rest of the assembly was much easier than the seat and tray. Nicely spread glue on both sides of the hoop, alight the parts, put in the dowels and clamp. Really only took a few minutes a side.

I came in for a few minutes the next day after letting the hoops dry overnight, glued on the seat and tray and shelves all in one step!

I gave the whole thing a nice sanding, and started the varathane coats over the rest! One difference though, I added 4 coats to the shelves instead of 3. I wanted them to hold up over time with shoes (potentially wet shoes of course) buting placed and slid over the surface over and over

The bench fits perfect! I've over the moon with how it turned out.

I would say the headphone stand was much more difficult, but I learned more on this project than I have in any other I've done in the project

I learned:

The difficulty of designing with tight restrictions (again)

The difficulty of ascetically designing with very tight restrictions.... probably more than just tight restrictions

Actually working with wood. Yep, I had to use the table saw for the second time ever with this project.

Finishing

Working with a "client" (the girlie)

Most importantly, every little detail matters with style and looks. There is MANY more little details than what this Instructable or write up could ever cover. I could probably write a novel about every detail. From placements of the dowels, to the shape of the bottom of the seat, to the small differences in angles with the "legs"

This is definitely one of those projects that will influence every project I do from now on. The lessons I learned here are very important and reinvent to nearly everything in my program (and hopefully future career!). Of course I hope I get 100%, but honestly the grade isn't important to me at all with this project.

I hope you all enjoyed my normal scatter brained documentation of a project of mine, I'm sure there will be more from now on! (I need to remember to take pictures!