For the first time since I finished my speaker boxes back in, let’s see, December, I’ve built something for myself. A month ago. Well, more by this point. I just haven’t had a chance to document it. The lady-friend and I were moving at the beginning of May and were awfully short on furniture, so I figured I’d make us at least some of what we needed. Then we got a puppy, hence the lack of documentation…
She’s much bigger than this by now, though, although from the lack of scale you’d never know what she’s was like at this point anyways.
I started with something I’d been mulling over for a little while: a dining room table. I’d seen a neat design in Fine Woodworking Magazine that I wanted to cop a little bit from. I didn’t take the whole design, as I wanted to go a different direction with most of the piece, but one main design element was lifted from that table in that issue.
I also took some inspiration (to put it mildly) from a coffee table built by the father of some kids I occasionally babysit. Then I added a bit of my own ideas, sized everything according to how big the internet told me a table should be, and went from there.
The first step in the process was to glue my table-top together. The main body of the table I made out of 3/4″ birch plywood leftover from building the stereo cabinet for my father. For reasons that will become clear, I needed to put a border of pine 1x3s along the edge. So I 45 degree angle cut the end of the 1x3s to fit in the corners, then applied some (a bit too much, in fact) wood glue and clamped the thing together overnight.
Next came to shape the support structure underneath the table top. This was also made using 1x3s. To start with, I angle cut the ends to match up with the future bevel on the edge of the table. I also had to cut the notches for the lap joint, as the supports were designed to cross each other inside the legs of the table.
Unfortunately, I put the lap joint on the wrong side of the wood. So a simple re-draw and second cut and things are all better.
Except wait…
By the time I’d broken off three out of the four ends on the short beams, I decided I’d best get some more 1×3. So I did. This time I made sure to cut the ends a little better, using an improvised jig on the table saw to hold the angle right. Then, with the long beams completed in much the same style (with different dimensions, of course) I laid them out and checked my work, which ended up being pretty okay.
Next came the table legs, which were cheap, standard-and-better fir 4x4s to begin with. First I drew up and cut out, using the band saw, the finger joints at the top of the leg, where the beams cross through. Then I cut out the shape of the leg, first a little thicker, then thinner. In the end I would have gone back to thicker if I could, but not the exact shape it began with.
Alas, this process wasn’t without its own casualty. As I was cutting the fourth leg, I realized I was getting a bit off my line on the not-waste side. So I stopped, leaned back, pulled out the blade, etc. I didn’t want to run the blade all the way back into the cut, so I thought: “Hell, I’ll just cut horizontally across to take off the length of the cut from the waste side.” So I proceeded to cut off the part I needed instead.
But I got a new length of 4×4 and cut a new leg, and all was well again. With the general shapes carved out, it was time to do some cleaning. For the finger joints, I had to do quite a bit of clearing out using a chisel and sand paper to get them to shape. Then some serious planing to smooth out all the rough edges from the saw, followed by more sanding.
And so, four legs. Still somewhat rough, but shaped, and with the finger joints pretty well cleaned out.
(To Be Continued…)
Dovetail Joinery 