Now that it’s spring, which will one day actually translate to warmer weather, Dan’s focus has turned to updating our outdoor space with custom furniture designs. His butcher block coffee table was the first, and there are plenty more in progress that are quickly taking over the workshop, garage, and basement.

His latest project is a stacked wooden bench, inspired by a design from The Cutting Bored. 

And while inspiration is what drives Dan from one project to the next, he also has a knack for customizing designs to make them his own. In this case, the inspiration was the stacked wood design, and the customization was shaping it into a more geometric pattern with a higher, more rectangular back.

To start, he cut pine wood to staggered lengths, gradually increasing in size. They were then stacked and joined together by wood glue and, of course, clamps.

With the legs assembled, he then added the base of the seat, which included three stacked 10″ wide boards of pine wood. To hold everything in place, Dan used precisely 526 clamps. Okay. So maybe I’m exaggerating. But not by much.

After the seat base was secured, it was time to add the back layers of the bench. As you can see, wood glue and a brad nailer came in handy as he added layer after layer of wood, helping to hold everything together along the way.

With the wood securely stacked, now was the time for the real design work to begin. Now if you can look past all those clamps in the above picture, you can see that the edges are still pretty square. This is where a wood carving knife would come in handy, but because Dan didn’t have one on hand, he put in a little extra work by using a belt sander to smooth out the design and round out the edges. A slow and dusty process, but one that helped to shape the bench into it’s true form.

And while you’re probably used to us staining the majority of our wood projects, this one followed the recently-completed butcher block coffee table and remained as natural wood. All that was needed to finish this beaty off were a few layers of poly.

And with that we have the finished product, and hopes that warmer weather is soon around the corner so we can put this beauty to good use.

For more behind-the-scenes photos and real-time updates on all of our projects, check out Dan’s Instagram account – @dan.waz