Back in mid-May, Jared came over to hang out. He and I were out back, shooting pellet guns from the deck. Jared sat down on one of the wooden benches of our deck dining set and said bench broke. Mind you, the furniture had long since seen its better days. And Jared’s also a 340-pound offensive lineman. That was the moment that solidified my decision to design and build a table and benches for the deck. Two-by and four-by treated lumber is heavy and clunky and wood. I wanted to build this furniture out of steel.
My friend Jeff invited me as his guest to Asmbly, and he spent an hour with me to teach me the basics of MIG welding. At the end of that lesson I was able to stick two pieces of metal together. I’d figure out the rest later.
And over the course of four weeks of many nights and weekends, I built our new patio furniture framing out of 11-gauge 1.5″ hot rolled steel tubing. I grinded (ground?) every square inch of every piece of tube. I miter cut each piece to make right angles. I grinded more. The part that I was most excited about–the welding–really only comprised of about 10% of the project timeline. Then there was more grinding (of my welds). I recently read a funny quip: “grinding and paint make the welder I ain’t.” I did leave a lot of my welds still exposed. They might not be pretty welds, but they hold two pieces of metal together, and I got a dollar that says one of those benches will easily hold three 340-pound offensive linemen.
It was a lot of hours in the evenings and on weekends, but it was a ton of fun to think about, research, and build.
