The planing stop bites into the workpiece and holds it in place effectively

While the focus of this build has been on trying to hew as close to Roubo’s description of the French-style bench as far as possible, when planing my “Roubo” bench I decided I wanted to add a swing away seat by Benchcrafted. I find chopping dovetails, and some detail work, more comfortable when sitting at the bench instead of being hunched over it, and having a seat which is attached to the bench and folds out of the way, seems to be a space-efficient solution. I fitted the swing away hardware to the right-hand bench leg over the Christmas break, but hadn’t had an opportunity to turn the seat itself until this weekend.

Planing the seat blank smooth

I had been saving an offcut of the oak slab I used for my Mortise & Tenon stick chair for the seat top, which meant I could keep to a single species for the whole bench. I cut the blank into a rough hexagon, about 12″ wide, and then planed it to 1″ thick. This also gave me a chance to test out the planing stop I fitted last week, and found that it gripped the workpiece very well indeed with only a sharp tab with a mallet to drive the workpiece onto the teeth of the stop.

Marking out the diameter of the seat, on the underside

Once the seat was at final thickness I scribed an 11″ diameter circle on the rear side, and then removed some more of the excess material forming corners with a back saw, in order to reduce the risk of a catch on the lathe. I then mounted the lathe faceplate onto the rear of the seat, and slid the seat into position on the lathe.

Turning the seat blank

This is the first time I’ve turned anything this year, and while a 11″ wide disc is about as simple as turning can be, it was immensely satisfying. The process of taking an irregular-shaped piece of wood and changing it to a perfectly round circle in a short period of time was remarkable, and I”m looking forward to turning some bowls and platters later over the coming months. To turn the seat I used an EasyWood roughing tool for most of the grunt work, followed by an EasyWood finisher to clean up the surface and to round over the corners a little. After drilling the holes for the mounting screws and mounting the seat on the hardware bracket, I applied a coat of boiled linseed oil to the seat top.

Fitted and ready for oil

This was a quite a simple stage in the build, but it was very satisfying to get another element of the bench finished in what has proved to be a very busy week. All that remains now is to make the grease box, and then to mount the shelves on the stretchers. Roubo is very nearly here.

The oiled seat, ready for use