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by Bongo

Garden Bench For Free!

  • 2 pallets

  • medium

  • 12h

  • free

Hi everyone first post, hope it goes ok, a bit unsure about the cable drum but its only a pallet for holding a wire and it’s in the spirit of recycling this great resource. I’m always coming across pallets as we all are I reckon, but it’s not often you get a cable pallet and as the garden needed a bench it seemed ideal to use.

After trawling the net, I came across some similar ideas and taking a few of these on board and picking the best bits I had a rough idea set in my mind. I toyed with the idea of making a rocking version but without a fair bit of trial and error and the possibility of wasting the reels I decided against it and went with a solid stable version instead.

Taking the cable pallet to bits requires a couple of spanners and maybe some wd40 type oil. You’ll need a good jigsaw with a decent blade to cut curves out of the ends.

It took two pallets to form the seat and the back, simple but along the edge of the inside board of the pallet and you’ll end up with two solid ready made rectangular pieces.

I laid the pallets on their edges and roughly copied the back of an existing chair to get the angle right for comfort. I used a corded drill to drill my holes through the thick blocks and the edge. As its fairly awkward work its best to drill a hole at a time get your bolt in and then go onto the other, well it was for me anyway and when you’re making the first prototype things never always seem to go as smoothly as the rest.

Onto bolts, you get 4 long bolts out of each cable drum, by cutting these down and welding t pieces onto them you can create 8 shorter bolts for attaching the sides on. Fantastic, no extra bolts to go and get hold of, saving resources and the cost is kept down. The only hitch is that your workshop or a good friend will need to have an arc welder and grinder. Arc welders can be fairly small, Aldi and Lidl do a cheap one usually once a year, these are highly recommended for small home and workshop projects.

Once it was all together I then hit it with the jigsaw, cutting my curves and the straight bottom piece, I added a scrap of 6 x 1 treated timber to the front and the top just to hide away the edges of the pallets a little more and unfortunately, I used about 10 new screws to my shame. But I may have scrounged these on a building site I was at recently. I found an off cut of reclaimed farmhouse joist and cut out two half circles to use as shelves on the side for coffee, wine, cigarettes and books…..just the good things….

I added a final touch by using a router to countersink the washers and nuts into the sides themselves so that they wouldn’t snag or catch on anything. I gave it a good going over with a belt sander rounding over any edges and especially on any steel/nails that could also cause a problem.

Raiding my wife’s shed I found a pot of paint which I thinned down with plain water and applied liberally and voila, all that’s left is to place it….easier said than done.

Thanks for reading this far, it’s a good project and an excellent end result. I’m not sure how long it took and I’m guessing at around 12 hours or so. With everything in place, I don’t see why you couldn’t make this in a weekend? Maybe even a day if you went at it hammer and tongs.

Optional mad cat who is keeper of the pallets, one must ask his permission to take a few….

Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools
Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools
Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools
Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools


Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools
Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools
Garden Bench For Free! Pallet Benches, Pallet Chairs & Stools

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Donna
Donna

Love the video!! Great work.

pwaters

Awesome bench. A project I will definitely try. Was thinking about making it a rocker bench, but with stabilisers on the back to stop it rolling completely backward. Many thanks for sharing.

Baz Allin
Baz Allin

Very nice job, but not sure about the “free”. Round my neck of the woods, cable drums start from about £35 for a tatty one and go up from there :-)

Stan Parry

Really impressed liked very much. Congrats.

Ross
Ross

love it mate. well done

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