After several attempts at carving the roses I finally went with inlaying some shop bought items into the remembrance bench.
For the ends of the bench I was originally going to go with copper leaf However, a small trial made a section look very ‘bling’ for want of a better word. It would have been OK if I knew how to age and tarnish the copper, but it was just far too reflective for what I was after. I wanted subtle and discrete. In the deepest corners of the workshop I had a couple aged aerosols of ‘metallic deep copper’.
The colouring of the ends is really subtle; in some lights it barely shows; which is perfect.
The bolts on the original bench were all plain steel and were rusted beyond saving. We purchased new stainless coach m6 bolts and counter sunk them into the planks. The nuts were replaced with nylocs and new penny washers added.
The original braces to stop the bench wobbling side to side were obviously made on a budget. This bench is now over 20″ longer the original and could quite comfortably seat at least one extra adult. The braces with only one person seated, could be seen to curl in an S shape with the slightest of ‘jiggle’.
A 1″ angle iron upgrade was necessary. This strengthened the bench’s triangulation considerably. Now, it needs to be dis-assembled, packed and taken back to France in a weeks time.
It will sit at the end of our pond.
Read Part One of Remembrance Bench
