 Hi and welcome to another low-tech video Today we're making a Leopold bench, which was a bench made popular by Aldo Leopold here near Madison, Wisconsin It's essentially two triangles that come together to hold up a seat and a backrest You can find the plans at lowtechinstitute.org and follow along here with the plans So the first thing to do is to cut out the backs The backs have to be the entire width of the chair So here I'm doing 24 inches, but you can do up to 48 inches This is cut out of 1 by 8 wood, but you can do a little wider or narrow backrest as As you like I'm making six chairs. So I have to cut out six backs And now I have to start cutting out the sides Now I'm cutting out the sides. These are cut at 60 degrees again. Check out the plans for exact dimensions my circular size and to wide enough to cut out this one this 2 by 8 With one go. So I have to cut it out First on one side and then flip it over and cut it the other way Which makes it kind of awkward to turn this large 10 foot board around. I need an entire 10 foot 2 by 8 To do this just because of the height of the chair and the legs It needs a little bit more than that the standard 8 foot 2 by 8 So I carefully line it up and Cut out the second side and the nice thing about a 60 degree angle if you remember back to Geometry in high school. It'll make a three-sided equilateral triangle 60 degrees 60 degrees and 60 degrees. I'll show you that in a minute one note on the long leg Which also forms part of the back support. I have to cut a notch. I think it's a 12 degree notch again check the plans Out of the back and we'll see where this is where I attach the back rest If we didn't cut out this notch the back rest would be leaned really far back and it would be really uncomfortable To sit on so at the very top of the back rest we take out just a couple inches To make it a little more comfortable to sit it and I like to when I'm doing a mass production I like to put little stops into place and that way I can measure once and cut a dozen times Now we move on to assembly and because again, this is an equilateral triangle. I take the smaller Leg and put underneath and mark where it crossed and then I flip it over and I push it into this little jig I made with a two by four. I drill in with a quarter inch bit tap in the quarter inch by three and a half inch carriage bolts add the Washers and nuts and tighten those down until they bite in And that's one of the sides and I just have to do the same thing for the other side Once the sides are made. I start assembling the chairs I start assembling with the back and so I put them down on what will be their front face and I'm using I'm using seats the wood I cut for the seats which are three inches smaller than the width as Spacers I set these in with Square stop at the back so everything is nice and lined up in square and now I grab one of the backs Add some glue if you're going to be doing this for outside use use tight three so that it's waterproof line this up really nicely add Two pilot holes and put in a two inch screw if I were going to do this again I would spread the screws out a little wider because that will give it more lateral stability But with the glue it's not going to make a big difference Now I line it up on the other side Make sure everything on the chair is nice and square and I had to do a pilot hole and then adjustment To make sure it was square and then a second and now the chair is More or less stable will hold itself together Before I add the seat which is what I'm doing here. This is I'm adding a little glue into the corner and now I tap the seat down into place And I look in the back to make sure it's all lined up As long as it's even it doesn't really matter exactly where it is as long as it's even on both sides and square and To help keep that squareness and pull it together nice and tight using a three-foot clamp Now I'm going to drill three pilot holes Before putting in my three and a half inch screws and this will help hold the seat down But it will also hold it in that 90-degree Notch, which will help hold the chair nice and square and Solid together or the three screws Space them nice and evenly don't get too close to the front Because remember that angle as you can see there if you get too close to the front You might pop the screw out of the angle So give it a couple inches from the from the front angle of that support leg Now I release them and I have my chair It's supposed to be rustic, so I'm not spending a lot of time smoothing it, but I do want to take off the rough edges from sawing I Also want to camp for the inches which means just give them a 45 degree angle just on the edge It just makes it feel a little nicer. I just again they're supposed to be rustic So I just want to make sure that it's not going to catch anyone's clothing or fingers or anything like that You can use sandpaper. I'm using a microplane And then I'm going to add a coat of linseed oil You can make these out of cedar if you're going to use them outside You can even make them out of treated lumber, but I really avoid treat lumber if I possibly can so I'm adding a coat of Boiled linseed oil which is not edible although linseed oil is but in boiled linseed oil is not edible But it's not nearly as toxic as anything else that we can use to coat these like seal intersting But you certainly can do those if you want a different color or a or a potentially longer lasting finish These are going to be out on our porch Undercover so they won't get rained on so I don't need to go into too much more preservation You can forget again. You can find these plans on our website lowtechinstitute.org These plans are free if you make something with them, please take a picture and send it to us We'll feature on our website If you have any feedback for our instructions as well, please do let me know Thanks for watching the video today. Check out our website lowtechinstitute.org and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks a lot for watching