Memorial Park Bench

[Dandan]

Hi all,
I have a question about constructing a park-style bench that i was hoping the hivemind could answer, and I thought that in return I would supply you with a nice picture heavy project thread, so everybody wins!

The project is intended to look like so:



The question I have is the rear pieces of the end frames have a 10 degree bend halfway up, how would you go about constructing this?



I'm lucky in that I have plenty of timber to play with, so cutting it from a single piece is no problem, but that's going to affect strength as the grain won't run with part of it. I could split the difference so top and bottom sections are both about 5 degrees off the grain, but this seems just wrong all round to me.
The other obvious option is to join two peices, if so, what sort of joint should I use to do that?
Any other genius options i've missed?

 

[paulrbarnard]

I have one in my garden made by my grandfather before I was born. Looks very similar. The end peices are cut from a single solid piece. The wider slat in the backof mine has a nice heart cut out.

 

[Cabinetman]

Hi Dan, no just cut it out of solid it will be fine, you’re probably going to be using something like 2 1/2 to 3” square and it will still be plenty strong enough. Where these benches fail is where the back slats fit into the bottom rail and rot, all I can suggest there is plenty of polyurethane glue (foaming gorilla) Ian
Edit, if you are using smaller stuff you could always cut a gentle curve into the back of the leg where it changes direction to give it a bit more meat.

 

[Dandan]

Perfect, thank you both!
Paul, I have a plan for that centre panel too...

 

[Dandan]

Without further ado:



Just need to cut the other 31 pieces out of this lot and it's job done:



Before anyone mentions the sacrilege of ripping down big slabs into matchsticks, my friend wants the bench made of her late fathers supply of wood, and it's all slabbed like this. Honestly I did my best to take some of the less impressive slabs for this job, some of it is huge, like corporate boardroom table huge, so i'm ok with slicing these tiddlers up a bit. Plus there is a fair amount of rot and woodworm that I'm having to work around, so there will be plenty for the firewood pile I imagine, none of these slabs would have been usable in their entirety.

 

[andys wood shed]

WIP pictures from one I made

 

[Fitzroy]

I’d be tempted to drill a drainage hole in the bottom of each of the lower mortises, wouldn’t be visible unless you’re lying under the bench, and it’d give them a better chance of drying out.