A cushion is made of three basic parts: the cover we all see, the padded part we know is there, and the board that is the structural foundation.

I had figured that cushions are somewhat standardized, so I should probably just be able to buy new cushions instead of making my own. I spent hours trying to find sites that sold seat cushions. I found one that sells to churches, but the reviews were mixed at best, and the cushions weren’t the proper size.

I tried to find just the boards that had been precut to the proper size.

But there was no luck.

Finally I watched enough YouTube videos to be convince that I needed to cut my own boards.

Luckily for me, Calah has a jigsaw. Unfortunately, she didn’t have blades for the jigsaw.

But that was OK because I didn’t have any wood to cut.

The boards that had been used for the old cushions were 3/8″-thick crap plywood. Just three plies, and there were gaps all over the place. Knots in the wood added further inconsistencies and gaps.

Cushions don’t have to be pretty all the way through, but since the old boards had lost integrity, I wanted to start off with something better. It’s possible that the crap boards had only recently started to sag, but there was no guarantee of that being the case. Though, of course, I had wandered around to see if there was any abandoned plywood that had been used to board up windows in the area before deciding the best move was to buy new plywood.

After some research, I decided to go with 1/2″, 7-ply plywood from lowe’s. I ordered it online for curbside pickup along with jigsaw blades.

This jigsaw is designed for U-shank blades, but quicker-change, T-shank blades are the new standard. No matter, there were many packs of U-shank shown as in stock at the local Lowe’s, so I was fine ordering those.

But when I went to pick up my order, they informed me that they didn’t have the U-shank blades after all.

I left Lowe’s with the wood I needed but nothing to cut with.

More on this next week.