Reading Bench

[bowhntrmatt]

Anyone who has a wife that is a teacher knows about all the little project ideas they come up with. My wife teaches middle school English and wanted a bench for her classroom.

I started kicking ideas around, then the other day we were at a restaurant that had benches made of old tailgates, so I thought that would be cool. I typed in tailgate to fb marketplace and one of the first listings I saw fit this project perfectly and I knew I had to have it.

[bowhntrmatt]

Step one of the process was to bust out the welder and plasma cutter to fab up the bench frame. Since I don’t own any of those things, I went ahead and picked them up on eBay.

[bowhntrmatt]

Don’t worry guys, I made sure my garage was absolutely spotless for this build along so y’all wouldn’t think less of me.

[bowhntrmatt]

The next step was to figure out how to mount the back to the leg brackets. I finally got to use the transfer punches that I found at a yard sale 2 years ago. I knew they would come in handy some day.

[bowhntrmatt]

Big oops on the very first hole. Turns out that I drilled right where the tailgate latch mechanism rides.

[bowhntrmatt]

Scooted her over a smidge and tig welded in a custom threaded insert to bolt to.

[bowhntrmatt]

While I had the tig welder out, I figured I would fix that extra hole I drilled. Nobody will ever know.

[bowhntrmatt]

The time came to finish the metal legs, which came raw steel. Since the tailgate is powder coated, I wanted the coating on the legs to be equally awesome. So I built a powder coating setup out of solid live oak.

[bowhntrmatt]

Powder coating complete

[bowhntrmatt]

Oh yeah, skipped a step. Since this will be going in a Tx public school, you just never know what kind of curriculum will be happening. So I added some leg levelers to keep these kids straight.

[bowhntrmatt]

She’s assembled for now. I’m having a custom cushion hand-sewn in a quaint little shop in China. It might be another week or so before it gets here.

[bowhntrmatt]

[ThisLadyHunts]

What a great looking bench and the tailgate you found is just perfect. Enjoyed the ride-along, too.

[gonehuntin]

That turned out great. Nice pictures and write up.

[Brad96]

That's awesome. And convenient that the tailgate says "Reading" on it.