If you grew up in the midwest like I did, you have undoubtedly sat on an old, rustic farm bench at some point in your life. They are almost always made of extra wood that was sitting around, beat up, and used indoors and out.

Short of finding one of these rustic farm benches on a yard sale, it’s hard to come by one that is actually old. There are a lot of newly made replicas out there today with the popularity of rustic decor items.

Due to a family connection in Iowa, I have access to a lot of barn wood. After a request from a family member, I made one of these rustic style farm benches out of that barn wood. I made an additional one that I ended up selling.

Building a rustic farm bench

The construction is fairly simple. For these, I make all the cuts with a hand saw to keep a more authentic look. They are held together with a little glue and brad nails. Because some of the barn wood is so worn, I will often reinforce them with some glue blocks underneath. It gives me a stronger area for nailing. I do create a notched area for the cross pieces as that allows the top piece to cover the edge of the cross pieces rather than the other way around.

If you are interested in one like these, let me know. I have more barn wood.

What I learned:

Old material is tricky.

Old barnwood boards are almost always cupped or warped and in some instances so warn that they are about half the thickness that they were originally.

Hand work isn’t that hard.

In most cases, making these cuts with a hand saw didn’t take any more time than it would have to setup the table saw or miter saw to make the cuts I needed. It took a little more energy, but not time.

You can’t replicate weather-worn edges.

A fresh cut in old wood still looks like a fresh cut. Doing it by hand helps it look more authentic, but not old. Only time can do that.