I don't really intend to build this; not exactly anyway, and maybe not at all. But I do intend to build a bench at some point, and I like the idea of slats with space in-between them. For now I'd just like to gauge if something like this would be strong enough. Let's suppose a worst-case of three people sitting on it.
And how would you go about figuring it out?
Here's my thought process so far. I figure 11 1x3s in this orientation should hold a good bit of weight, but even if it's enough, two problems remain.
- They could twist.
That could be cured by putting some short pieces of the same material between the long slats; in the middle, as I've shown them, or perhaps two sets each 1/3 of the way from the end.
- The joints where the top slats meet the "legs" have too little surface area. The "racking" forces might cause the joints to fail.
To counteract that, I made two of the "slats" out of 1x8 instead, producing better geometry against racking.
I'm already thinking of moving the legs closer to the center, and of designs that look nothing like this one. But I'm still curious to get your opinions to calibrate my own sense of the sturdiness of something like this.