Hi all.
I'm planning to build a shop bench, for sawing, sitting on while chopping or coffee drinking. The drawing shows the rough design in a side view: Two leg frames, dovetailed into the top and two stretchers in between.
I'm thinking that only the leg frames will be glued up, and that the bench can be knocked together with the tapered sliding dovetails between legs and top and the wedged stretchers between the legs.
I have little experience in dimensioning furniture and I hope to get some advice from you.
I want the bench to be pretty sturdy and of normal height for sitting on. My idea is to make the leg frames strong enough to resist racking in the cross direction and the stretchers high enough so that when they are wedged in place there is no racking in the lengthwise direction.
Therefore I imagine that the dovetail connection to the top does not have to take that much load. Am I wrong here?
Furthermore, is there a rule of thumb for laying out the sliding dovetails with respect to strength? What about the width (A) of the tail and the depth of the dovetail dado (B)? Does this depend on the choice of wood? I will probably make the bench out of a cherry board I have, and the top will be somewhere between 1 and 1 1/4 inch thick.
Looking forward to hear your views on this.
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