Renovating an old oak garden bench situated at Meadow Brook, Dartington in Devon.

 Not something that I have done before but it did seem a shame to throw this old garden bench out because, although it had an arm missing and there was some wood rot on some of the back supports and the leg bottoms, the main frame wasn't in too bad a condition. In particular, the seats struts were solid and in good condition. The joints were mortice and tenon with dowels used else where rather than screws. The only screws I noticed at this stage was on the four corner support brackets. The lower support brackets needed replacing.

This is the bench after removing it from Meadow Brook. Note that the left arm is missing.

The bench had been installed on four concrete plinths and attached to the concrete with metal bars and small 2 inch coach screws. It had been painted over the years with green and then brown paint, a lot of which had now flaked. The underside had not been painted.  The commemorate plaque was brass and was dedicated to Anthony Morley (1931-1989). The letters had been painted over. I am not sure who Anthony Morley was but a Roger Morley managed the original apple orchard at Dartington and started the cider press so may be Anthony was a relative. In fact I found out later that Anthony was Roger Morley's son. The metal tag on the bench indicated that it was made by a company in Bristol on Pennywell Road called Glosten or Gloster. Presumable the bench was installed in 1989 making it 32 years old.

What remains of the front tenon and hole for the dowel.

The rear mortice with the dowel intact. The wood inside the mortice was solid.

A lower stretcher that was pretty rotten together with the lower part of the leg. This would have to be replaced.

The other arm was intact and the joints looked OK. The lower stretcher looks OK but the legs underneath are damaged. Also note that the last two back struts are damaged by water ingress at their bottoms, so more repairs needed.

The first job was to take the whole bench down to bare wood to assess the damage and see whether a renovation is realistic. To do this I used a block plane and shoulder plane together with a large chisel for places I couldn't reach with the planes. This worked well and so avoided using sand paper and creating lots of dust.

The bench after removing the paint, cleaning-out the mortice and making a new tenon for attaching a new arm. Note the commemorative plaque has been removed for renovating.

I then removed the rotten stretcher and lower legs and made a new mortice to fit a hardwood tenon and glued this in place with polyurethane adhesive. I had ordered some oak for the renovation and awaited delivery so meanwhile I treated the whole bench with wood preservative and left this a few days to dry and make it safe to enter the workshop (this was during a period of rain otherwise I would have done this outside to avoid the fumes).

Rear Supports

I started the repairs on the lower part of the back struts. There was a little corrosion on the mortices on the lower rail where the strut enters the mortice. Only a couple needed more extensive repair. I had a good piece of oak that was formerly part of a canoe so I ripped this is half to get two pieces about 1 inch by 3/4 inch and then planed one side to give the correct angle to align with the struts. I then used the vernier to get the exact thickness of the struts to make the housing joints in the new oak rail. I then clamped the wood in position and marked the width of each strut with a marking knife and cut the appropriate housing joints for the struts using a chisel and finishing with a Stanley 71 router set to the thickness of the struts. The housing joints were finished to get a tight fit of the rail to the struts with minor adjustments using a fine wood file. 

The oak repair rail in place showing two of the housing joints. This rail will be subject to water running down the back support struts and so the top will be treated with clear polyester resin to extend it's life.

This is a view of the seat from the back after fitting the new rail. The next job will be to glue another rail along the length of the seat to enclose the housing joint  (basically extending the mortice for the struts) and reduce water ingress.

New rail fitted, glued into place and treated with preservative.

Arm replacement

 

This was straight forward using an oak rough sawn board and a card template made from the existing arm and the measurements of the mortice depth on the rear support rail. I used a rip and turning saw to cut out the basic shape and then a joining plane and spokeshave to finish to the final shape. I then made the tenon to fit the existing mortice and carefully fitted that in place by making sure the mortice was clean and well shaped, adjusting the tenon as needed. Once this was fitted, I marked the mortice on the front of the arm using the tenon previously made. and drilled out the mortice to the approximate depth and finished with a chisel. A vernier caliper is a useful tool to get the correct dimensions at this stage. Next I marked and drilled the hole for the rear tenon oak dowel (5/16 th inch) using the existing dowel hole from the old dowel and then did the same for the front of the arm, firstly though the arm and then marking the position, through the tenon into the other side of the arm. The arm was then glued, dowelled and clamped into place.

The new arm together with edge support

Finally I replaced a loose edge support (shown on the lower right of the photo) as the old one had degraded after the arm was lost and it was exposed to the weather.

Leg replacement.

I decided to replace all four legs using oak that needed to be cut to size to match the existing legs. To do this I used the veneer plane to start the saw rips to give 5 mm thickness veneers leaving the main stock to be planed to the final size. The idea was to use the veneers to cover the lapped joints. I cut the lap joints first (6 cm deep), checked and adjusted the alignment and then prepared the stretcher tenons (2.25 cm deep) and leg mortices. 

Lap joint on leg before veneering.

The new legs was glued into place to match the original and the whole joint covered with veneers ( 8 cm deep) . The veneer served to strengthen the joint, protect it from water ingress and to improve the appearance of the legs. After glueing, the veneers were tidied and a 1/2 inch diameter dowels placed through the middle for extra strength.

The finished leg replacement. The replacement stretcher was moved further from the ground for added rain protection. The joints will be less obvious and maybe a feature with the bench upright.

Wood treatment.

I decided not to repaint the bench but treat it with a natural oil but a week before that, I treated it twice with a wood preservative. I followed that with a oil stain of light oak and left this for two days to dry. This resulted in a better match between the old and new oak wood. I then chose to use natural Tung oil for water protection and apply several coats and allow plenty of time between coats for them to cure. The oil penetrates the wood and polymerises in-situ to produce protection but the process is slow depending on the wood and temperature. I haven't used Tung oil before but it is supposed to be better than linseed oil and Danish oil in giving protection to wood exposed outdoors. 

I diluted the oil with white spirit (50:50) and applied by brush in the workshop where the temperature during the day was about 15-20 C. The dilution is recommended so that the oil penetrates more easily into the bulk of the wood to give deeper protection. This dried slowly but after 7 days it was ready for a second coat, again diluting to about 50:50. After this I put the bench outside to give a further two coats, the final coat without any dilution with white spirit.

The finished bench ready for installation.

Hopefully the renovation will keep the bench in use for another 10 years!!..who knows?