Building a picnic table.
I built a picnic table.
After examining the price of outdoor furniture, and also observing it’s generally poor quality. I decided I’d build the type of table they put in pubs to withstand the rigors of drunken louts. Hopefully it should be enough to withstand me.
All up, cost about $450 AUD because inflation sucks and timber is oddly expensive in Tasmania.
I made tons of mistakes along the way but you won't see them unless you go looking. But here they are:
- 1. Staining and painting after assembly. It was a massive pain to crawl around painting under the benches. I eventually flipped it over and got it all done, But In my rush of building it, I think I could have just instead painted it in big parts and then put it together.
- 2. If you know a person with a chop saw, borrow it. I did all my cuts with a speed square and an hand held circular saw. Some of those 60 degree cuts have other amounts of degrees in them.
- 3.When you start to get tired, stop and take a break. I had my drill driver slip off a screw and stab my thumbnail. 10/10 pain and I give it 0 stars.
General shopping list.
- 6 X 140mm * 45mm * 3600mm Construction timber boards - Seats and table top
- 2 X 140mm * 45mm * 3600mm H3 treated boards - These are the legs and bearers.
- 2 * 90mm * 35mm * 2400mm Construction timber - Braces for under the seats and tables.\
- 16 M12 100mm Carriage bolts.
- About 100 75mm treated pine deck screws, I went with square drive heads.
- A tube of liquid nails and a way to dispense it. - Every time you join a component just throw some construction adhesive on there. Why not!
- Some water based deck stain for the benches and top, and flat ColorBond Monument paint for the legs. You could probably get away with two test pots worth
General construction.
- The legs are cut at 60 degrees. (ish) They are 80cm long. Find a triangle calculator online to work out how high you want your table. Mine is about 75cm and that works for me.
- The table top is 5 boards with a 10MM gap between each board. 740mm wide in total.
- The seats are 2 boards with a same 10mm gap.
- The stretchers are 1500mm long with 60 degree cuts. The tops of these sit 40cm from the base, so when the seats are added you’re sitting 45cm off the ground.
- Make sure all the braces on the seats and the table line up. I set them in 180mm from the sides and then screwed the top braces sideways to them.
- I built my bench so all the screws came in from the underside and when you’re sitting eating theres no visible screws or bolts. Just a style thing. YMMV
- There’s lots of plans on the internet out there. Just look to build a 6 foot table and turn all the measurements into metric.
- Cutting took a while and that’s because at the end pf all the cutting I remembered that I hadn’t replaced my circular saw blade since building a treated pine retaining wall. So I wasted a bit of my time with blunt tools.
![A picnic table.](/posts/real-things/picnic_table.jpg)
A fun way to spend a weekend. When I get a big umbrella I’ll drill a hold in the middle. Until then this is it.