A Glider Bench for the Garden
- Richard Parker
- Jun 8
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 8
Mollie has a spot in her garden that is perfect for a bench. The views of the gardens, the ocean and minimal views of neighbouring roof lines makes it ideal and she had mentioned this a few times over the past year or two. A plan was born to surprise her with a glider bench for this spot while she was away in Ontario visiting her sister and family.
While convalescing from knee surgery, I found a great design on YouTube and sent an email to the individual that published a build documentary on his channel, Wood-U-Make-It . Michael McCrory is from Toronto and he sent a copy of the plans along with some helpful tips. The original plan was published in Wood Magazine in 1995.
We have a local saw mill that provides full dimension rough cut lumber from trees on the Island. In this case, the yellow cedar came from the Comox valley. Using the material list in the plans, Holly and I picked up enough lumber to build the bench and took our treasure back to the garage wood shop. It was the end of March and my knee was 5 months healed! I cut all the pieces over-sized and we stored them under a work bench for a couple of months to dry.
The day after we dropped Mollie at the airport for her trip East at the end of
May, I started to plane the dried cedar to it's intended thickness and cut all of the pieces to finished size. This process yielded about 3 large contractor bags full of shavings and sawdust!
The plans are very good and I simply followed the steps and built each of the main components one by one. The base for the glider came first followed by the seat bottom. The end pieces and the back were then assembled and gradually, the bench came together.
Holly coated the wood with several coats of teak oil to keep the colour as long as possible. Mother nature will want it to turn silver/grey but this should delay that a little. We were finished in the nick of time and positioned it with lots of blocking. We will build a small patio for it to sit as "the spot" has a slope and we need to create a level area for it to glide properly. Mollie is happy with her new garden furniture and we hope she enjoys a few glasses of wine and/or cups of tea while gliding on her new bench!
