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So, I was checking my DMs on Instagram and I saw a request from a new museum in Los Angeles to design and build some benches for one of their new galleries.
Designing and crafting heavy Douglas fir benches for a new LA museum, focusing on weight, carving, and finishing techniques.
Key Takeaways
- Heavy construction lumber requires careful handling and multiple trips for transport.
- Design and fabrication can be iterative, with carving informing the evolving form.
- Weight reduction is critical for large wooden sculptures, achieved by hollowing internal layers.
- Combining power tools like chainsaws and angle grinders allows both rapid material removal and detailed shaping.
- Finishing with stain and putty can effectively mask imperfections and unify appearance.
What the video covers
- Received a commission from a new museum in Los Angeles to design and build benches for their gallery.
- Used 6x12 Douglas fir beams, construction-grade lumber, requiring multiple trips for transport due to weight.
- Glued beams in layers, carving rough forms with a chainsaw and refining with an angle grinder.
- Design evolved during fabrication, balancing aesthetics with functional weight reduction by hollowing middle layers.
- Explored scalloped bubble shapes to reduce weight and add visual interest.
- Faced challenges with wood movement, glue application, and managing the heavy weight of large beams.
- Carved the benches in sections, frequently re-evaluating design and adjusting approach for ergonomics and form.
- Used black stain and black putty to finish, ensuring cracks and glue lines blended seamlessly.
- Built a custom rig to flip and maneuver the heavy benches during carving and assembly.
- Delivered and installed the benches at Dataland, a new museum in downtown LA featuring Rafik Anadol's artwork.
Chapters
- 00:00Commission and Material Preparation
- 01:00Gluing and Initial Carving Plan
- 02:03Design Breakdown and Weight Considerations
- 03:05Carving Process and Tool Use
- 03:54Refining Form and Weight Reduction Techniques
- 04:54Assembly and Glue Application Challenges
- 05:56Carving Orientation and Ergonomics
- 07:54Chainsaw Maintenance and Fitting Pieces
- 09:49Flipping and Maneuvering the Bench
- 11:54Finishing and Installation Preparation
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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This has turned into one of my biggest and definitely heaviest woodworking commissions. And the fabrication starts with these 6x12 Douglas fir beams. These are meant for construction and not necessarily fine woodworking. So, they are pretty flat, but not perfectly flat.
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Even in these just 6 1/2 to 7 ft lengths, they're pretty heavy. And after gluing just two together, I saw that weight was definitely going to be one of the challenges for this build. I ordered the beams in 12 ft lengths from my local
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building supply. And then I cut them into yards so I can get them into my truck. And even though it's just wood, the weight becomes an issue. And I had to make multiple trips in the Tacoma. I set them out in the yard so that they
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can dry and the sun will kind of pull the sap out of them. We also had to remove staples from the ends. After a few days in the sun, the sap beads up to the surface, and I can just scrape that
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off with a razor blade. My plan was to glue three pieces together at a time, do a little rough carving, and then glue three of these three-ply beams together.
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Each one of these beams weighs about 100 to 120 lb. And I had to use clamps on the edges to keep them lined up with each other so they wouldn't slide around when I applied downward clamping pressure. What's funny about this
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commission is that it started as a request for black concrete furniture. The client specifically asked if I could design really dark gray or black concrete benches and chairs that I would fabricate and deliver. So, I presented them options that were exactly what they
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asked for, but I also included some of these black wood bench designs that I felt were a little bit more exciting and wouldn't weigh nearly as much as concrete. The client liked this direction more. And then we settled on
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dimensions for the first island. It's going to be a little over 6 1/2 ft long and about 32 in wide. And we're going to keep the height under 16 1/2 in because that's how high three of these 6x12
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beams are when they're stacked up. I broke the design down into three of these big beams, each made out of three glued-up beams. This just helps me conceptualize this giant carving project into three big chunks. I really tried to
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design the middle layer to reduce as much weight as possible. It's going to be sandwiched between the two outer layers, so it can be mostly hollow. So, I cut the wood at an angle and then glued these pieces on individually.
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Since this is construction lumber, the wood might move a little bit. So, I left it clamped up for 24 hours before I started carving it with the chainsaw.
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I'm using my 40-volt chainsaw and this thing is all about the batteries. The normal 4-hour batteries are pretty good, but for heavy-duty stuff like this, I highly recommend the 8-hour edge batteries. It feels like your saw is
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turbocharged and I was cutting through this giant beam like butter. I have a rough design for each of the three sections and I would just carve away a little bit and then trace an outline and carve away a little bit more. I was
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pretty tentative at first and I kind of felt like I was just nibbling away. I didn't want to overcarve anything and then not be able to fix it. So, I probably carved away pieces that were too small at a time. But, I felt a lot
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of pressure with this commission and I just really wanted to get it right or as right as I could. So, I went kind of slow and steady, took off small pieces, would stand back, look at it, and then
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cut away a little bit more. The easiest way to remove mass and establish the form is by carving down the edges or corners. There was a section here where I wanted to take down one of the planes and I just carved a bunch of curves into
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it and then I can chip these out with a hammer or just with the chainsaw itself.
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I'm not super skilled with the chainsaw, so I would kind of cut these facets and then use my angle grinder with a wood carving disc to round it out and see if I like the curved geometry that was
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revealed. Even though the angle grinder is pretty aggressive, it's not quite as fast at removing material as the chainsaw. So, every time I was angle grinding, I was going slower. But I still feel like it's necessary for me to
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try to get a sense of where this shape is headed to, even if that means there were times where I had to backtrack and chainsaw over places that I'd already angle-grinded. So, as a fabrication process, this isn't very efficient. But
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for me, design is happening during the fabrication. It's not like I worked out a perfect 3D model of this and it was all going to get carved on the CNC. If that was the case, there would have been
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a whole bunch of time going into the 3D modeling process. And then it's just setting up the material and letting the robot precisely carve what you precisely design. My process for this project is a little more do a little bit of design,
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do a little bit of fabrication, re-evaluate the design, do a little more fabrication, and so on and so forth. One of the features that I explored in the renderings was kind of these scalloped bubbles on the side. I like these
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aesthetically and functionally to reduce the weight of the overall sculpture. So to do these, I just make a whole bunch of cuts and then just go in and smooth everything out with the angle grinder.
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As far as fabrication goes, this is about as fun as it gets for me. It doesn't feel like there's tedious repetition of task. It just feels like you're exploring form, revealing a little bit more, standing back and looking at it, and making like little
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discoveries where you could change the geometry to fit in certain pieces of wood grain. The first of the three sections was coming along nicely and it was time to start thinking about how to glue on the second section. Now, I had
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fabricated this sort of like a bridge and some of the pieces were a little too long. So, I just trimmed that to make it lighter to move. This was pushing the limits of my sister Jesse's sturdiness, but we were able to move it over and
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start seeing how the two pieces would connect. I traced the outline so I knew where to apply glue. And we just slathered it on real, real thick 'cause again these pieces aren't perfectly flat. And when you combine multiple of
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them, they get a little bit less flat. And we just need these things to hold together and then deal with the cracks later. I was constantly having anxiety about the weight of this project 'cause most of the time it's just me or Jesse
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comes by to help sometimes, but I knew I was going to need to flip this over a few times, carve from different angles, and the weight was already really adding up. So, the concern about the weight helped me deal with the concern about
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the design because I was tentative to remove material too fast because there's no undo button when it comes to power carving. But the motivation to reduce weight and make it more maneuverable kind of pushed me past that and I just
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kept shaving off pieces with the chainsaw. Carving from the top down like this was one of the more productive sessions that I had. Ideally, I like carving a piece in the orientation that it's going to be set up as. I just feel
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like if you're working directly from your head, it's the more continuity for how you're seeing the piece unfold in front of you versus how it's going to be perceived by the public is better. But from an ergonomic standpoint, carving
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down like this and being able to access the top, bottom, the two ends, and the front face all at once outweighed the visual continuity. Not that much of the middle section is visible, so the power carving went really, really fast. Plus,
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I was just lining it up to the first piece. So, in no time at all, we were r
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had to grind them down a bit before applying the glue. My brother was in town to help. And we raised up the big heavy piece and then just kind of rotated it down onto the third section.
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Now, we probably didn't need to do too much clamping just because of all the weight on this, but we didn't want to slide. So, we did apply a few clamps.
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Finally, the whole thing was in one piece. Now we could rotate it down and finish out the carving process. I started by establishing the outer perimeter, bring this thing into the final size that it needs to be. In
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addition to my concerns about weight and appearance, I was also starting to get anxious about the cracks on the endrained, and they just felt a little too substantial for wood putty. But I try to focus on one problem at a time,
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so I just pushed that off till later. I was carving the contours of the top and I want to be mostly flat since it is a bench, but I also kind of wanted to find little places for for individual seats.
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And visually, I think it'll be cool if it's not totally flat, just like a flat board. But I started noticing that there was slack in my chainsaw blade, even when I tightened it all the way to the max. And then I realized I'd put quite a
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bit of strain on this one blade. And when I took it off to replace it with a new one, I compared the length of the one that I had used a lot to the new one and it was more than half an inch
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longer. All the strain from it and the heat buildup kind of stretches them out.
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So, this is a reminder to make sure you're periodically changing out your chainsaw blades. Also, a sharp blade just is such a joy to work with. But, it is kind of crazy just to think about a metal chain stretching. It was mostly
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done with the chainsaw shaping. And now I could really get in with the angle grinder and define all the curves that I want. And as I did this, I started to take a mental inventory of all the cracks that I was going to have to fill.
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And I came up with a loose idea of how to approach this problem. I cut a whole bunch of slivers in some of the scrap pieces to create a series of shims and wedges. I also took a lot of long thin
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slivery pieces that are kind of like toothpicks or skewers and I just built up a massive supply of shims of all different thicknesses that I could use as crack fillers. I like this method as opposed to just wood putty cuz you can
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get pretty deep into the cracks that have depth to them. And this will also serve to structurally reinforce it, not just fill aesthetic gaps. So I try to find a sliver or shim that was the right thickness for the crack. test it to make
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sure it was an approximate fit, slather it up with a whole bunch of glue, and then gently hammer it into place. I tested this method in a few instances, and when I trimmed away the wood, I was like pretty pleased with the results, so
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decided to cut a whole bunch more shims and slivers and fill this things up like a porcupine. We even used them on some of the natural cracks in the wood just to keep those cracks from expanding. And after trimming them away, I hit them
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quickly with the belt sander to clean up all the messy glue that squeezed out of the cracks. I was pretty happy with the shape, but not so much with the weight.
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So, I decided to flip the whole thing over so I could hollow out the inside a little bit more and do the finish sanding for the bottom of the bench.
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This was also a really good time to experiment with how to move this thing with a limited number of people. And we would kind of use a 4x4 post to lever it up and kind of slowly walk this 500lb
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bench bit by bit. To actually flip it, I built a little cage around it with a levered arm so I could rotate it up and have it sit stable on the side before gently rotating it down and getting it
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completely flipped over. Now I can really hog out the excess wood and get this thing as light as possible without cutting it too thin to where a crack or a split could develop and weaken the whole structure. But we definitely
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played it on the safe side and this thing is super sturdy. While it's upside down, we did the final little bit of shaping and started the long arduous process of finish sanding. Sanding starts with a quarted belt sander with
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36 grit sanding belts. That's super aggressive. But this thing removes material super fast. With a belt sander, you can't get into all the tighter curves, but it is really good for long continuous curved surfaces and you just use big sweeping motions and it's quite
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nice for quickly establishing shape. Once we got the bottom sanded, we ready to flip it over and use putty to fill in all the smaller cracks that were just a little too fine for our sliver and shim technique. We're using black wood putty
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since the finished stain is going to be black. Now, this probably isn't necessary because we're using Rubio Precolor Easy, which is a super potent black stain, but since black putty is available, figured might as well give it a try. I really like working into the
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cracks with my finger. I just feel like I get better control than I do with a putty knife. And I just try to push it in into all these little hairline cracks. We then did our finish sanding all the way up to 220 grit. We'd already
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tested out the Rubio pre-stain and saw how powerful it was. So, we're like, we definitely need a drop cloth down for this. Putting a drop cloth underneath something is a little challenging, particularly with how windy this shaded patio gets. But with a little bit of
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struggle, we were able to get it done. This Rubio Precolor Easy is a water-based stain, and you use it before you apply their oil. It penetrates and soaks down into the wood, the glue, the putty, and everything else, and you get
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a real consistent color. And because it's water-based, the oil you apply over the top can then soak through that as well. And with these two different products, you get a lot of color control combinations and a really easy to apply,
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highquality finish. I was mostly concerned about how this stain would do on the glue in the cracks itself, but it stained it perfectly black. No problem, no fuss. Now, before we get to the delivery, installation, and show you the
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Homebase. We want to deliver this big piece first, make sure the client was okay with it before doing the rest of the islands. I love the look and feel of it, but I was nervous to see how it would look in
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gallery lighting, and ultimately that the person that's paying for it would be happy with it. Jesse glued on some felt pads so we won't scratch their epoxy floors. And I got a bunch of creepers because we're going to have to fit this
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through a really tight doorway. I used a winch on my truck to pull it into the truck bed. Mike from Modern Bills came by to help. So there was lots of high fives and I assembled a team to do the
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delivery and the install. The museum is called Dataland. It's a new museum in downtown LA that hosts the artwork of Rafik Anadal. Check him out. His stuff is kind of mind-blowing. I modified a creeper to make it more sturdy. And I
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have this little wood block that I can screw to it so that when we pivot it upright, it has a positive stop so the wheels don't slide out underneath us.
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This system worked pretty well and we're able to get it through the narrow hallway with no issues. That does mean I have to kind of lift it up with my Viking arm every time we tilt it up or
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didn't tilt it back down. If you're ever putting together a cost estimate for this type of work, make sure that you include enough for delivery and installation because this is pretty labor intensive. and I had to hire this
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crew just to make sure I had enough hands right there that I trusted. The client was very pleased and gave us some input on the dimensions for the final set of smaller islands that are going to go around the big one. And the idea was
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to create a little collection of black islands that go on this black reflective epoxy floor where guests in this sanctuary can observe one of the big 30ft tall video installations. I really love this project, but the overwhelming feeling that I was having at the moment
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was a sense of relief. when you're seen as sort of a DIYer or as an online creator, often the more like prestigious parts of the art and design worlds kind of feel like you're not for them. And so
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when Murph reached out and to give me this opportunity, I was kind of surprised at first. I mean, sure, I've exhibited in some museums before, but I kind of had a little bit of like, well, why me? And frankly, I was questioning
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whether I could make something good enough with my basic skills and my Robi tools and Home Depot level materials.
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But ultimately, I think it's creativity and effort that really matter. And so, even though I had my doubts and anxieties along the way, I just keep trusting in those two things. And of course, relying on a lot of help from
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Jesse, Brett, Shane, and my brother Nate. Data Land is now open. And I'll put a link to where you can get tickets to see it if you're in the downtown LA area. I've been to museums all over the
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world, and I've never seen something quite like this. And this is just one of the small galleries. There's these massive immersive environments with sound visuals that are mind-blowing to the point where I almost got a little bit dizzy. And if you do make it there,
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check out the sanctuary room. Have a seat on one of the little islands that we carved and let me know what you think. All right, thanks for watching.
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Bye.
Topics:woodworkingbench designDouglas firchainsaw carvingmuseum furnitureweight reductionblack stainHomeMadeModernDataland museumRafik Anadol
