How to make a log bench with HIDDEN storage! _ I Like To Make Stuff

# Turning a Log into a Bench with Hidden Storage: A Step-by-Step Guide

## Introduction

Bob, a passionate DIYer, embarked on an exciting project: transforming a log into a bench with hidden storage. Without a detailed plan or sketches, he winged it, using whatever tools and materials he had at hand. This article walks through his entire process, from preparing the wood to finishing the bench.

## Preparing the Wood

Bob started with a log given to him by his grandfather. The first step was flattening the top. He placed bricks under both sides of the log to hold it steady and used a hand plane along with chisels. Acknowledging that this wasn’t the most efficient method, he emphasized using what’s available. After several hours, the top was sufficiently flat for further work.

Next, Bob decided to cut the log in half. However, due to its height, it couldn’t fit through his bandsaw. His solution was to flip the log and make a crosscut with the bandsaw. Despite having the wrong blade for resawing, he carefully pushed the wood through, ensuring a straight cut.

## A Mistake and Correction

While cutting, Bob realized he made a mistake—he cut the wrong side of the piece. To fix this, he glued the face back on, clamped it dry, and recut it. This process taught him the importance of attention to detail, especially when working near power tools.

## Joining the Slabs

After cutting, Bob used a biscuit joiner to align the two halves. He added glue to the slots and faces, inserted biscuits, and pressed the pieces together. Pencil marks helped ensure alignment before clamping. Once glued, the slabs transformed back into a single piece.

## Hollowing Out the Center

Bob measured in from both ends and used a circular saw to make reference cuts. Realizing the wood’s hardness, he switched to chisels and hammers for hollowing out. He cut slots every inch with the circular saw, making small pieces easier to remove. This step took an hour but was rewarding as it revealed the hidden storage area.

## Cutting Legs

Bob then prepared the log ends by cutting one-inch squares on both sides using a table saw. Despite uneven faces, he worked carefully to avoid kickback. Once cut, he marked and aligned the pieces before joining them with biscuits and glue.

## Creating the Steel Frame

Using his new miter saw, Bob cut steel for the bench legs. He measured each piece to fit the log’s width and height. After cutting all components, he welded them together, ensuring flush joints. Once satisfied with the welds, he ground and polished the frame before painting it black.

## Final Assembly and Finish

With the steel frame ready, Bob flipped the log and inserted the legs into the cutouts. He secured them with screws and attached seat cleats using CA glue. After sanding and smoothing the top, he applied a semigloss finish to all surfaces except the hidden storage area.

## Conclusion and Reflections

Bob expressed satisfaction with the bench’s outcome, despite starting without sketches. He highlighted the joy of working around wood’s natural shape and encouraged others to try similar projects. Mentioning hurricane-damaged trees as a resource, he emphasized that creativity can turn any available materials into something useful.

This project showcases Bob’s resourcefulness, adaptability, and passion for DIY. Whether you’re experienced or just starting out, his approach offers inspiration and practical tips for your next woodworking adventure.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enHey! I'm Bob and I like to make stuff!Today we're gonna turn this log into a bench;with hidden storage.Today we're gonna do something a little bit different.I don't really know how this is gonna turn out.This is a piece of wood that my grandfather gave me before he passedand he had it in his shop for a long timeso its nice and dry.I don't know what kind of wood it is though.So I think what we're gonna do is turn this into a bench.I don't really have a plan for it,I haven't done any sketching or anything like that,we're just gonna kinda wing it.The only thing I do know is that this gonna be the top,its gonna have some sort of a steel leg assemblyon each side or embedded in it,and I want there to be some hidden storage on the inside.So I think the first step is gonna be to flatten the top,that should make the whole thing a little bit easier to deal with.Alright, lets figure this thing out!I put a couple of bricks under both sides of thisto hold in place, and went at the top with a hand plain and some chisels.Also just to point out,this is probably not the most effective way to flatten this top,and this is probably not the right plain to use,I probably don't have the right chisels,but this is actually all that I have on hand so I'm just kinda using what I got.there are always better tools to be able to accomplish a task,but you have to use what you have at your disposal.So in this case it's just gonna take a while.After a couple of hours it's looking pretty good,its not perfectly flat but it really doesn't need to be yet.If you did need to flatten the slab,probably the best way to do itwould be to use a jig, and a routerto just go back and forth and get it completely the same level everywhere.But in this case I just wanted it roughly flat,so I could flip it over and take it through the bandsaw.I want to make a cut about right here, all the way across,so the top section will come off.But this piece of wood is too tall to push through my bandsaw longways.And the reason I didn't put it trough my planer to clean this offis that this too tall this way to fit through my planer.So my plan is,to flip this over, take it though the bandsaw,and cut this right in half,and then on each one of those two halves,run it through and cut off this sectionlets try it out and see if it works.I ran this through the bandsaw.Now I didn't had the quite right blade for this,the one I had worked,but a thicker blade would have worked better for resawing.I just took my time to make sure to push this through,and not force it, because I didn't want to snap the blade,and I wanted to try to keep the cut as straight as possible.I moved over the fence,to cut off the slices on the top of both of these piecesYou can see a little bit of smoke coming up,in diffrent places, when it burns,and that told me I was pushing a little bit too hard,and I needed to slow down a little bit.At least on my bandsaw,if I try to use the fence,the wood will often try to wander away from the fence once it gets past the blade.As long as you're aware of this,and you can work against it, it works pretty well.Making cuts like this by eye,often works better.Bonus points to you,if you saw the mistake I just made.But if not, let me explain what I did.I was more worried about the camera than the actual piece of wood,so when I picked it up and put it to the saw,I wasn't paying attention to which face I was cutting.And in this case, it matters.So I cut of the wrong side of the piece of wood.It's not a huge deal, I'm gonna glue it back on, and clamp it down,and then, I'll go back and recut it again.Mainly it's just a hassle more than anything else.So I covered these faces with a whole lot of glue,spread it out really evenly and then added some clamps.I let it dry for a couple of hours,and then went back and cut the correct faceEventually I ended up with this.And it was time to join the slabs back into a single slab.I lined them up and made some marks,to use for a biscuit joiner.Now the biscuits here don't add a lot of strength,but they do help to align the pieces when you glue them back together.So I added some glue down into the slots that I cut,and along the faces.I added the biscuits into the slots,and pressed both pieces back together.The pencil marks also help you get it aligned,You wanna make sure that it's aligned before you start clamping it down.Once you do it turns back into a single slab.Add the clamps on the top and thebottom to make sure that it didn't warpany other direction as well.Then it was time to hollow out the center of this sectionI measured in from both ends of both pieces,just to give myself a point of reference,and then, used a circular saw to make some cuts there.these are my starting points.I wasn't sure how hard this wood wasand how well I would be able to cut it away with a chisel,so I cut from line to line tokinda give myself some marks, andto split the grain there.I went at it with the chisel and hammer and knocked awaya single piece and i found that it wasgonna be really tough to do thiswithout cutting some slots.So, I took the circular saw again and went all the waydown the piece cutting about every inch.Obviously the more cuts you make withthe circular saw the smaller the piecesare gonna be which is going to makethem easier to take out for about anhour i use the chisel and a hammer andjust cut out as much of this area as Ipossibly couldthis was a lot of work but it wasactually really rewarding as welleventually i tried to flatten out thespace as much as i could but i didn'twant to get a perfectly flat just wasn'treally that important to the secondpiece i did the same thing but this timei just use a hammer to knock as much ofthis out as possible before using thechisel this was way faster withbasically the same result in the endwhile I'm doing that I wanted to do aquick add for myselfyou guys may not even realize this butmy website I like to make self.com I sawall sorts of awesome t-shirts andstickers like this one it's brand-newalso sell digital plans for a lot of theprojects that i make so you can makethem yourself also signing up for myemail newsletter is the best way to besure that you never miss a single bit ofcontent that I put out whether it'svideos or podcasts or anything elseanyway just wanted to throw that outthere go check it outI like to make stuff calm i got thesepieces in the right orientation and thenI made marks on the top and the sides ofboth ends just to make sure that I wascutting in the right placesthat took these to the table saw withthe blade at one inch and the fence oneinch from the blade Iran these piecesthrough and cut out a one-inch square onthe end of both pieces this was a littlebit sketchy because none of the faceswere flat so the wood didn't sit againstthe fence for the tabletop perfectlyflat if you're doing anything like thisbe really careful because they can catchand kick back very easily with thesecuts made I line the pieces up and thendrew marks on both ends just add somebiscuits like I did before to reattachthese pieces when I went to glue thesepieces up i made sure not to let theglue seat down into where the bark is itwould be really difficult to remove anyof the glue that it's squeezed out intothat bark area so just made sure tocover all the surfaces as well aspossible i put in the biscuits andreattach these pieces and then addedclamps to the flat side to hold themtogether this work pretty well but itwas actually a really weird shape toclamp also notice that some of the barkwas coming loose from the bottom whereI'd cut it so i squared some glueunderneath the bark in between it andthe wood and it needs a strap to holdthem together while it dried then it wastime to make the steel frame for thisbench i use my new miter saw to cut thesteel for the first time and they're nota sponsor for this video but i have tosay i was really impressed with how wellit worked with other cells in the pastI've had trouble with deflection whenyou're cutting an angle but this oneactually cut a perfect 45 i measured outthe short side of this piece of steel tomatch the with the log then I cut theother minor on the other endI didn't test fit with this piece tomake sure that it fits inside the logand then i just copied it sighs ontoanother piece of steel cut this one downas well and these will act as the topand the bottom follow the same procedureto do the uprights for each one of theframes and ended up with eight pieces tomake a frame for each end of this logthese are a little bit taller than theyare wide so make sure to lay them out tomake sure that I was grabbing the rightpieces i took the pieces from the topand then drill three holes down intothem you step bits here just to get abigger hole at the top and a smallerhole of the bottomI laid out the frame and make sure thatall the corners were square beforeputting attack on to each corner just tohold the pieces in place once i had anice stack there and went back and didfull welds on the inside and the outsideof all of the cornersI like frames like this to be flush onthe outside to the flap discs to eachone of these welds to get themcompletely flat on the inside corner Iwasn't quite as worried but I used afile just to try to wear them down alittle bit then whatever the entirething with the flap discs really lightlyjust to remove the mill scale then Imade another frame the exact same wayfor the other side I flipped over thelog and fit these pieces into the gapsthat I'd cut once they were in place imeasured and marked the center of eachone of these and then measure thedistance between themI just cut another piece of squaretubing with a flat end and fit inbetween these two it was easier in thiscase to hold them in place with clampsand tag them before doing full weldsrather than trying to use the weldingteam this way I knew that they wereperfectly square to each other and inthe right positionI ground this one down and shine it upwith the flap discs just like I did theother frames then I took it outside andadded a couple of light coats of semigloss black and while that dried I gotthe hand plane to completely flattenedthe topactually I didn't fully flatten it thereare some areas that were pretty low andso for those used an orbital sander justaround them overyou're just going to be sitting on thisso really I just wanted to smooth it outto hold the seat panel in placeI made a couple of cleats out ofhardwood just too attached to each end Icut curves on the bandsaw on each end ofthese so that they would fit down in thecut out that i made on the inside of thelog once i had them flush with the topsurface added a little bit of CA glue tothem and then activator to the seat andcarefully lined it up and set it downand those pieces bonded immediatelythis glue really just held these piecesin place we'll have pre-drilled holesand drove in some long screws topermanently attach them then it was timeto assemble everything the easiest way Ifound to do this was to set the frame onits side and then wedge the login fromthe backside it was tight enough that itheld in place so i can drive in thescrews remember how i made those largerholes on the top of the frame that's soI could drive in a screw through thehole in the bottom into the wood ispretty long screws so this thing reallylocked together once i had all thescrews in a flipped it up and put on thetop then I applied some finish to allthe surfaces except for the bargain thatwas itI'm really happy with how this thingturned out especially considering thefact that i didn't even sketch anythingto start with this was all made up onthe fly and I just kind of figured itout as it went along which is really funsometimes when you're using logs likethis that are not mill down it's reallyfun to work around their shape ratherthan forcing the wood to work into theshape that you want in this case i justmeasured as i went and made the steelframe to fit alongside the wood andspeaking of the metal frame i was a lotmore comfortable using the welder thistime and I was really happy with howthis frame came outthat's good because hopefully that'llmotivate me to do more metal projects inthe future the more use the tools themore comfortable i am with them ifyou're like me on the East Coast you mayhave noticed that there's a lot of treesbeing knocked down right now forhurricane Matthew or another hurricanethat's come through if you go around andcollect some of that lower you can useit for projects like this after it driesoutjust remember you don't always have togo to the big-box store to get the woodthat you use for your projects i hopeyou liked this one let me know what youthink about it down in the comments I'vegot all sorts of other videos that youmight be interested in metalworkingwoodworking electronics 3d printing allsorts of stuff so be sure to check thoseout and don't forget to subscribe thanksfor watching guys see you next time\n"