2019
Building the Porch Swing
In June I decided to build a porch swing. I have many fond memories as a child sitting on the porch swing at Grandma and Grandpa Mixson’s old house and I had been wanting to build one for a number of years, but my town house in Reston didn’t have a porch to hang it from. Having settled into my new house and getting my woodworking shop set up using half of the double garage, I was finally ready to build one so I searched online and found a set of plans for a swing like I wanted to build. Next was finding the right wood. I had decided on making it out of oak for strength and would hold up better outside in the weather. I had made a number of things out of red oak, but the plans said that white oak holds up better in the weather. After not finding white oak locally, I ordered some from a wood outlet place in North Carolina and the following week UPS delivered the wood to my house. After running the boards through my surface planer, I cut the lumber into smaller pieces for the parts of the swing and then cut those into the final parts of the swing. After hundreds of counter-sunk screws each capped with a wood plug, the swing was assembled and after a couple coats of varnish was ready to be hung.
I first thought I would hang the swing on my front porch, but after further consideration decided that I would use it more if it was on the back porch and proceeded to hang it there. Dad had been coming over every Thursday for dinner for a while now and I had been showing him the progress on the swing each week and now, with it finished, he would be the first one, other than myself, to sit on it. He was quite impressed. Soon others would visit and sit on the swing.
See Also
The porch swing 1959
Sitting on the Porch Swing
Building the Swing
Ghosts in the Swing
Slide Show Below, click arrows to view next slide
