Hardwood table

In January 2010 I set myself a summer project. Having spent a lot of time working in IT I felt I needed something a little more hands on so determined to do some wood working. This is the result, posted about 2 years after the fact.

Like any good project, it started with a plan. Or rather two rough sketches.

I then went down to a local timber recyclers (Urban Salvage) to see what stock might work. All I really knew was that I wanted a nice native hardwood but beyond that new that I'd just have to work with whatever the recyclers had on hand. I ended up picking up a load of old Blackbutt floorboards and joists which I had them cut onsite to fit into my station wagon. This is the raw timber at home.

In an apartment there isn't much space to work so I made use of our small outdoor patio area for a few weekends until the project was completed. Wood glue ("Liquid Nails") was used to fix the pieces of the table top. A couple of 4m tension straps (the sort you use on a trailer to hold down a load) were used to apply pressure to the boards whilst the glue cured. The pine batons and G-clamps were used to prevent the boards from concertinaing whilst the load was applied by the straps. The boards were fixed and set in twos before assembling and gluing all four together.

 

The large tabletop area was difficult to work in a small space so an improvised workbench was created on the floor on some structural pine.

Masking tape (see leading corner) helped to prevent the power saw from damaging the external edges of the final piece. Note also that the table top is upside down at this point.

This shot shows the legs being prepared for cutting. The masking tape assists in keeping the pieces aligned and importantly the lengths even.

 

 Getting the straight edge (or in this case the spirit level) at right angles is critical and can take some time to get finessed. Despite the age of this timber one can also see that the pieces are not straight with respect to one another.

  

 The underside of the table top after trimming and the first two legs.

 

Preparing the second legs. More clamps are better, although G-clamps are time consuming to operate but provide a robust grip. Chocks are used here to compensate for my under-investment in G-clamps.

 

Again the baton alignment and masking tape help ensure a nice, clean cut.

A mock-up of the final piece can be useful to visualise the end result. In this case, the orientation of the rail (thin-edge horizontal) was being assessed.

G-clamps again came in handy to mock-up the final table configuration despite none of the critical joins having been cut. The chair provided proof positive that the dimensions were indeed correct.

 

A mix of the recycled timber and some spare pine provided a realistic idea of how the final piece might come to look since the dimensions more or less matched.

I had no experience with a router before I purchased this one so made some simple practice cuts on some pine scraps that were lying around. It quickly became apparent that a simple jig was required to ensure that the router was restricted to only being able to remove material from the required locations. This jig has the obvious shortcoming that it needs to be recalibrated for each workpiece, but it nevertheless served its purpose for getting some practice in before moving on to the final hardwood pieces.

 

As a step up from the simple jig in the previous slide I constructed the above to ensure the router didn't wander from the marked area on the hardwood offcut I was using to practice preparing the mortis end of the join.

The wood marking gauge lines can be seen in the wood here and the jig has done a pretty good job of keeping the router in the required area. It could have used a little extra length and about half a milimeter down one side to reduce manual adjustments with a hammer and chisel later on.

  

This is the final mortis and tennon joint made from off-cuts of Black Butt. Again, this was a practice piece using the end materials as the pine used during the first trial is in contrast extremely soft.

Some manual work with the chisel got these pieces to fit snugly after the bulk of the work was done with the router. I was relieved that these had come out square and flush, but I'd also invested quite some time in setting things up correctly so this would happen.

 

 

A macro shot showing the spacing between the tenon cheek and mortis.

Legs all marked and ready for the router.

Legs all routed and ready for chiselling. As you can see from the floor in the background this process creates a lot of sawdust, seemingly more than you might expect from the volume removed from the legs.

 

A simple jig was prepared to prepare mortis and tenon joints with a router. Close inspection will show some feint markings in the wood made using a traditional wood gauge. These marks indicate where the cuts are to be made.

Part of the table frame after the final cuts had been made.

 

This shot shows the completed pieces of the table, four legs, two long rails and 2 short rails.

 

Each leg was routed out using a home-made jig and hand-chiselled to make it square. Note again the feint etchings in the wood showing where the wood guage had been applied to mark out the cutting area. In this shot the square end had been chiselled out, the rounded edge is the result of routing alone.

 

 Finishing was performed with this orbital (finishing) sander. The machine was used with 80 then 120 grit paper, with a final hand sanding at 600 and 800 grit wet and dry silicon carbide paper.

 

A mock-up of a mortis and tenon joint was prepared prior to cutting up the 'real' timber. This practice piece was finished using French polish, mixed by hand from garnet shellac flakes. The holes were filled with wax. A piece of the real, unfinished timber sits alongside for contrast.

 

More French polish on a practice piece against a fully sanded but otherwise untreated piece of Black Butt.

 

A practice piece (left) treated with Danish/Scandinavian Oil, with the piece on the right sanded down to 800 grit and a final wet cloth applied to remove dust and raise the grain.

 

My father's hand plane was used to remove the machined groove in the timber which was there at the time of purchase. Disassembly and blade sharpening were required before this tool operated efficiently. The sheen of the Danish/Scandinavian-oiled surface can be seen in the table top.

 

This is so old-school but I couldn't help taking this shot! It will probably remind many of their father's and grand father's workshops.

 

The finished tabletop after two coats of Scandinavian Oil. The product used here has a small amount of urethane added to achieve a satin finish. The major knot and other holes in the final surface were filed using wax prior to oiling.

 

The table required indoor assembly due to the constrained dimensions of the doorways in our abode. The ends are glued but the brackets can be unscrewed to allow the long rails of the frame to be removed and the table taken outside again.

The frame and tabletop united in the same room for the first time.

 

The final piece assembled in the dining room.

 

Black butt is suprisingly hard hardwood. My basic home handyman drill shredded a drill bit trying to drill small holes required for the frame. I would encourage punters to use a drill with a manual chuck as this provides far better grip on the drill bit itself and won't leave bits stuck in the wood.

 

 

The finished product in place with some very outdated computer equipment.