Swing Progress

 

A couple weeks ago as one of those early spring warm streaks rolled by, I dusted off the porch swing project that I had started very late last fall. Glue has a finite temperature range to work with and in an unheated garage, that means that I have to flow with the weather. After figuring out where I left off, I glued the back to the seat and started making the arm rests on either side. 

Because this is sort of an experiment making it out of cedar which isn't the best wood for such things, over wintering has been hard on it. Some of the arm pieces had developed cracks in them and so I had to remake a few pieces not shown.

Due to the nature of the design, I will have to screw into end grain which is the strongest of joints. To help reinforce that, one can insert dowels perpendicular to the end grain and then screw through the dowel. But I didn't have any dowels on hand. So after scavenging the scrap pile, I found a short piece of oak that would do just find if I could turn it into a dowel.

Probably a dozen times I have seen this done on YouTube but have never attempted to do it myself. Within five minutes, I had made a quick jig out of a scrap board, a tapered hole and a sharp chisel held in place on top. I chucked up the oak scrap in my drill and within seconds had a solid oak dowel. It worked out great.