Outdoor Furniture
If you didn't see it, here is the full episode:
The Recap:
Last week, episode 6 of Framework aired, and as promised, I'm going to do a run-through of the things that never made it past the drama-loving editors. Although, I normally try to avoid anything other than the building process on these recaps, I do have to say, by this time, I am getting fed up with a few of the contestants and am having a more difficult time keeping that to myself during the challenges. I mean, after living, eating, driving, and working with some of these people, for 5 weeks thus far, AND not seeing your family, my patience was running thin.
The challenge this time was to create a lasting piece of outdoor furniture. After pitching my initial idea of a bench, and hearing the judges thoughts, I decided to create a concrete fire feature that burns ethanol gas.
If you watch the show, you would never know that this following part occurred. I began building the fire feature; the idea was to first create a MDF model, cast it in silicone, then fill this silicone mold with concrete. I knew finishing it would be a close one and I also knew that I had to have the silicone cast by the end of build day 1, that way I would have 18 hours left to pour the concrete and make the steel container that would house the ethanol.
The tricky part was that I needed a whole night and half of the second day to allow the silicone to dry and off-gas; it was imperative that the silicone was done on the first day or this piece would not work. I began, creating the shape of the fire feature out of MDF, made half of the form to house the silicone and then time on the first day was up. I knew at that point I needed to switch gears and build something else. It killed me to scrap the entire project, it would have been great, but this was just another instance of time not being on my side. And it was even more of a bummer when the judges came around the next morning and saw the MDF prototype and commented on how the fire feature would have been the winner...Oh well.
With 18 hours left, I resorted to building a familiar looking bench. I took two of my designs, the comfortable Silence and the Fast Freddy and made a hybrid. I have made both of these benches numerous times, so it was easy; maybe even a cop-out.
To start, I sketched out the shape of the piece on MDF and cut it out to use as a template, then made a second as a duplicate. With the duplicate, I cut it into pieces where the joints would be. And then cut out those pieces (with 1/8-1/4" extra on the edges, not on the joining areas) out of 8/4 (2") Teak, joined with the Domino, and clamped it up.
After glue was dry, I placed the un-cut template on top of the teak and with a straight top-bearing router bit, I cleaned up the extra material and made the teak the exact shape of my template. I did this for each part of the legs. Then, I cut slats for the table part, attached them and was just about done with the base.
I quickly made a mold for the bench seat out of melamine. And luckily, I had brought my hopper gun for concrete projects; I like doing GFRC because you don't have to vibrate it and can still polish the top. Personally, I like to see a little aggregate on the top, otherwise, I feel like the concrete ends up looking like a composite material without much soul. I sprayed the form using the Buddy Rhodes mixture, this is the first time I had used this stuff and it took some getting used to. Once I got the hang of it, I was impressed, it allows you to do things that normal mixes won't allow. I finished the concrete pour by the end of the day.
The next day, we only had a few hours left. I took off the concrete form, polished and sealed the seat. While the sealer was curing, I routed 1/4" round on all the edges of the teak base, sanded it to a 320 grit and finished it with Teak Oil. The seat was then bolted to the legs using 3" carriage bolts that I had set into the concrete while it was curing.
