What’s better than sitting around a campfire drinking beer? How bout swinging around a campfire drinking beer? A beautiful summer evening with a backyard fire pit is the perfect gathering spot for family and friends.
It took me just about 3 days, the first day was digging the holes and setting the uprights. All the wood is pressure treated 6×6’s. The next day was spent finishing to build it and the 3rd was spreading the gravel and setting the fire pit and staining the pressure treated. I bought the swings offline from Louisana Cypress Swings and Things and had to wait a week or more for them to be shipped.
I didn’t have any building instructions to go by, pretty much just winged it. I laid out the hexagon in the yard so that center for the uprights for each bay was 7′ apart because I knew I wanted to get 5′ swings. I had 14′ from each upright to the upright opposite of it…
I’m not sure what the angles were, I just took two pieces of scrap and laid them up there and messed around cutting a few until I got the angle right. We got all the top pieces set up there before lagging them all in. Left one bay swingless so that I could carry firewood in. I got 6x6x10’s for the uprights and they are sacreeted almost 3 feet in the ground. I guess its a little over 7 feet to the bottom of the 6x6x8’s on top…
Materials I used were…
- 6- Bags of Sacreete (or Quickcreete – whatever you call it) one for each upright.
- 6- 6x6x10’s (for the uprights)
- 6- 6x6x8’s for the top sections
- 6- 2x6x8’s for the stabilizers that go kitty corner on top of 6×6’s (for strength)
- 24- 3/8’s x 8″ lags for laggin the top horizontal pieces to the uprights (countersunk)
- 24- 4″ Deck screws for screwing the top pieces together horizontally before lagging them.
- 24 – 3″ Deck screws for screwing the top 2×6 stabilizers to the 6×6’s
- 10- 3/8×8″ eyebolts with nuts and washers for hanging the swings
Here’s the finished project…
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