Balance beam

[chris carter]

I made a balance beam for my son to play on. I bought the straightest (ugh!) doug fir 4x4 I could find at the big box store. While this was a down and dirty project not intended to be very refined, I had a horrible time with the curves on the feet. It was too thick to really use my turning saw with any kind of accuracy on the back side (and I don’t have too much experience with my turning saw). I mostly whacked away at it with a 1 inch chisel to get it reasonably close, then switched to a draw knife. My draw knife is pretty big - too big for something like this, so I tried to finish up with a spoke shave (too small!) as much as I could. It would have been nice to have a smallish draw knife or a heavy rasp. Oh well. Given its purpose (to entertain a 7 year old and slowly succumb to the weather) I think it’s good enough. I don’t know how well the glue will hold up to the weather, although it will be mostly under a covered area, so I drove a large lag screw through each foot. Three coats of spar urethane to seal it up. This project was a challenge for my tiny bench.
beam1.jpg
beam2.jpg
beam3.jpg
beam4.jpg

[Jim Koepke]

Neat

jtk

[Christopher Charles]

That's the best kind of project! Looks great and enjoy watching your son have fun.

[Brian Hale]

Neat idea Chris. It looks great!

So tell us...... who tried it out first?

[al heitz]

Or who crashed first?

[Kevin Hampshire]

Chris, What a neat project to make for your son. I only wish I had seen this a few summers back when we had our similar aged niece staying with us. I suspect this project would have been a big hit with her.


As to cutting the curves, My suggestion would not be to use a turning saw, spoke shave/drawknife or a rasp to do that. I would pencil in my curve, then saw multiple crosscuts to that line. Then use a wider chisel (bevel down) to remove the waste.

I think if you try that, you’ll find that it works to quickly remove lots of material and it will still leave a reasonable finished surface.

[Bill McDermott]

Chris, You have overcome your short bench issue by making yourself a nice, long Japanese planing bench and pretending it is a balance beam for your son. Clever!

[John K Jordan]

Excellent! Kids of all ages like those, great for their devlopent. I've cobbled them together with construction lumber and the grandkids used them a lot. But that one is way too nice!

[Lee Schierer]

I made a similar balance beam when my kids were young and they played with it for many years.

[chris carter]

Well, we gave it a good workout today. I think my son got the better of me.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

It's great project that will get a lot use. Well done Sir!

[Phil Mueller]

I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself...the curves look great. Nicely done. I agree with Kevin that multiple saw cuts and a chisel would have removed the bulk pretty well. I’ve also been know to finish up something like that with a large spindle sander attached to a drill.

[chris carter]

I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself...the curves look great. Nicely done. I agree with Kevin that multiple saw cuts and a chisel would have removed the bulk pretty well. I’ve also been know to finish up something like that with a large spindle sander attached to a drill.

Because I had four curves, I did get plenty of opportunity to experiment. Just going straight at it with a 1" chisel was the fasted method for removal (this was doug fir; in a harder wood I don't think that would have been the case!). But there was one curve that had a big, unavoidable, knot in it. For that one making a bunch of saw cuts did help significantly, and otherwise would have been impossible. In fact, the knot just plain sucked, but there was no way around it. I did contemplate resorting to electricity with the band saw, but I stayed the course!!