Make your own Concrete Garden Bench. Build a form to cast the concrete bench legs. This modern concrete and red cedar bench has simple, clean lines. This is the first bench of the series. This is Part 1 of the series.
See the Youtube Video and download the Plans.
Background for the Concrete Garden Bench ONE
Hi everybody this is Kent from man about tools and today we’re making this wood and concrete garden bench.
I’ve been wanting to make some benches to go along with the concrete garden boxes I’ve been casting. I like the blend of concrete and wood with simple, clean lines. This design has square concrete legs and a flat planked wooden seat. Here’s how the bench goes together.
Concrete Garden Bench Design
The concrete legs have three protruding seat bolts at the top and one bolt on the inside to attach a stretcher.
Three planks make up the seat.
Nuts with washers are threaded on the stretcher bolts through a hole in the side.
The seat planks are also secured with washers and a nut. And two ties are screwed to the bottom of the planks.
Finished Bench
I wanted to make strong connections between the concrete and the wood. I know there’s a number of ways of doing this with drilled anchors and brackets. But, for this first bench in this series I wanted to try casting anchor bolts in the form during the pour. In the similar fashion as a house foundation with anchor bolts for the sill plate.
Form for casting the concrete legs
And so nothing else would be needed once you stripped the form from the casting. Now I know this would mean a bit more work in the construction of the form, but building the bench in the end should be faster and should make it very sturdy.
So here’s the form for casting the legs.
The form has a 3/4″ plywood base with an angled inset attached, just like the the garden boxes.
A two part block holds the seat bolts in place and can be taken apart after casting.
The end wall and side walls are made of plywood. The anchors are 3/8th’s galvanized carriage bolts 3 1/2″ long.
The form has a bridge that holds the stretcher bolt in place.
This stretcher helps to prevent side to side racking, as the seat boards have only a single attachment point on each end.
