Southeast Michigan Woodworkers

I asked a while back about a hall table I wanted to start. Well, with Santa being so nice I got everything I wanted to use on this project. I've started out with some great lumber I from a person Bill hooked me up with back in the summer. Pretty boards I have to say.



I started out with making up some leg stock. I'm making my hall table a little bit taller than the plans and so I've made them a tad thicker so the taper looks ok with the longer leg length.

You can see the legs on the new infeed/outfeed table for my planer that I finally made up now that I had a drill press to really get the holes very square. I love using the planer so much more now that I have decent board support. It's been a pain since the bed moves on my planer, not the head.



Next up, mortices for the aprons to sit in. This is by the plans and I'm not sold on how they are basically slots that are taller than the aprons. I might have prefered to try doing this with a sliding dovetail instead.




Next up, taper jig time. I wanted something that was more flexible than the jig in the plans. They have it custom for just these legs. I need to head down to rockler or woodcraft in the morning to get some toggle clamps. That's what the extra two slots are for.

I figured two of the arms support the leg while the leg sits on the bottom one. This was some major fun with the plunge router and boy can that mdf spread some dust. Cuts like butter though.



Finally, I worked on cutting the parts for the front apron. These parts are from the same board. Originally, the plan calls on you to create the drawer fronts from the same board, but due to limitations of the 6" jointer I just couldn't get a board wide enough to have extra stock for the drawer height. The grain is so nice on several of these boards I don't think it'll be a problem though. I have these parts gluing up right now.



I'm having a blast with this. I can't wait to actually have something in the house I put together. More pics/info to come.

Didn't get a whole lot done over the rest of the weekend. I did manage to clean up the glued up front apron and cut the side/back aprons as well.

Then I had to cut the slot for the drawer guides and the table top clips to go into.



I also made the trip to woodcraft and got the clamps I needed. Funny thing is that I go down for clamps and came back with all kinds of stuff including some tung oil I was playing with on some scrap parts. This is going to look pretty nice once done it seems.

Here's the completed tapering jig with the clamps on the blocks:


And once I cut one side I had to add some height for the clamps to hold onto the second taper side:

Despite my saw belt dying today I managed to get my aprons cut. These shots are from when I did some dry assembly to determine which faces I wanted out/up/down before notching the tenons to fit the mortices in the legs.

The plans say to glue up at this point, but I don't know how I'm supposed to get the drawer guides into the slots in the front/back apron if I were to glue it together now. Does this seem normal?

That will be a nice table when you are done with it! I really like Walnut. Regarding your question, if I understand it correctly, maybe glue the front legs and front apron as an assembly and the back legs and back apron as an assembly and then assemble/glue the sides and drawer guides as a second step?

Because I work slow I usually have to do this in steps so I don't fight the glue drying faster than I work.

Thanks for the reply. I think that's what I'll end up doing with the glue up. I need to sand all of the parts down and I figure it's easier to do that now while I can lay them flat. Then I'll work on cutting the cross parts for the drawer supports/top connections. That way I have all the parts ready to go before glue hits anything.

On those mortises in the legs, should I only glue say the bottom 3/4 so that the aprons can expand/contract the final 1/4? They're 5.5" wide and might move a little bit I'd imagine.

I think the rule of thumb is a tenon wider than 4 inches should be broken up into multiple tenons or part of it allowed to slide in the joint. YMMV but that is what I usually plan around.

That is going to be a great looking table, and that is some seriously nice walnut.

Keep the photos coming.

-Tim

When you say multiple tenons do you mean notching the tenon in the middle to create two parts? I wouldn't have thought that would help the expansion issue, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Thanks a ton for the help. The last thing I want to do is have my first project go blow up on me because of a rookie mistake.

Sometimes to get the surface area you can put two next to each other (I have never done that). If they were in line I think you would be correct.

If you are worried, only glue a portion of it. Maybe put a post up about tenon length and gluing. I'm no pro and I am really interested in what everyone else does and their experiences.

If this is your first project then you are doing terrific!

Here is a link to an article by Ian Kirby that might help.

http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/artic ... dtenon.cfm

BTW, where did you get the walnut from?

Well, it's my first project to go inside the house. I did a cabinet and a rolling cart for the workshop.

The walnut came from a local guy. It was posted in this forum a while back and he has a buddy with a saw mill, but he was looking to make some room. It's great stuff, a little dusty at times, but I'm loving working with it.

It's been a few days of learning.

1) if your tools need some tune up, don't wait...just do it. My jointer was acting up a bit and I thought nothing of it. Until I could not get my nice pretty selected curly maple boards to line up properly for table top glue up. Once I give it the run down of course the fence is not square and the outfeed table needed tweaking. By then the boards are < 3/4 and still not squared so I'm thinking I'll have to just use them as 1/2 or 3/8" drawer fronts on other projects down the road.

So no nice reddist maple boards for a top, I'll have to go with my backup boards which are much more white.

2) When filling knot holes in parts (say a leg) with epoxy, make sure you check if it's a through hole and if so tape it off. I'm going to have to refinish my kitchen table in the future now.

3) When you need some motivation, dry fit the parts of your project you have done where it's going to go and it will pump you up to keep working through the setbacks.




4) Check out this picture here:


What's that? How many drawers did I finish that made that mess? Why none of course. That is all from trying to finally get that PC dovetail jig to work on a single nicely mating dovetail set.

I can't explain it at all, but after finally giving up on my MW 2 1/4 plunge router and going to my new cheap PC 690 I finally got a fitting dovetail. It's crazy. I got "really" close with my MW, but I had to push the alum guide back so that the stamped line was far into the horizontal piece. Once I went to the PC router suddenly my DT was 3/16 too deep. I don't know why, but it's true. So my new cheap PC router which I wish had the soft start of the MW, finally got me some dovetails on test parts. Now that everything is setup, nobody touch anything and hopefully I'll be putting together some nice white maple drawers tomorrow.

Hang in there! I think what you are going through is typical. You are learning good lessons about your equipment. If you think something is out of tune then it is! Don't short cut the tune up process either because it will cost you a lot of wood for the scrap barrel.

As far as the router goes - my favorite is my 690. I think the balance is better when doing dovetails. I have the same jig and it is a p.i.t.a. at first but once you get it set up it seems to work nicely. I always use the same router and I adjusted the depth gauge on the side so I can usually get a decent joint with a couple tests cuts. If I am doing a project with a bunch of drawers I don't touch the set up once dialed in. In fact, I am temped to pick up another 690 and just leave it set up for dovetails.

Hey, can I use this when the next person asks me why I need so many routers?

I usually just use the 'because I can, why... jealous?' response... but that's getting old.

Sure! I have become fairly good at coming up with convincing reasons why I need another tool Although I am not sure if my wife believes me or figures it's better I'm in the shop than at a bar somewhere. At least this way she gets something out of the bargain!

I don't tell my wife (type) that I buy stuff. I just put the new in the back until it gets a little dust on it and say "What?.. that old thing? I've had that."

Don't think you are fooling her with that line . If your wife is like mine, they invented the idea of "that old thing! It's been in the closet for a long time."
Bill

Yeah, so my wife wants me to inventory the garage for "fire" purposes. I have this really bad feeling that she wants to estimate the value of what I have in the workshop to justify some purchase that she wants. I think I should inventory my tools and give them to a 3rd party for safe keeping, otherwise I am really in trouble.

That big brown truck that stops by nearly every day probably doesn't help either.

I managed to get the dovetails cut on the drawers tonight. Originally I was only going to dovetail the front and try out the new locking miter bit I got for the router table, but with everything setup for the DT I just said "why not".

The test part from yesterday made for a nice balance part in the jig to keep the clamps even.



I had one bad cut. I'm not sure if the parts moved or what. I didn't notice it until I had pulled the parts from the jig. So I had to recut a couple of boards. I figure it's good since they'll make for good finish test parts. I want to play with some finish and see how I can keep the white maple look, but try to accent the end grain of the dovetails some.

It's been a while since I've posted anything on this project. The whole new floor issue put the table on hold for a bit, but I've gotten the base finished now so I figured it's time to update.

The drawers didn't come out that great. I tried to brush on 2# cut shellac...oops. Lots of blotching and while some sanding helped, it's not nearly as nice as it should be. I got to sanding too much thogh and decided it was better to have the shellac issues. After all, the drawers will stay closed.

The table finishing went much better. The glue/pinning with 18ga brads of the aprons fixed that bowing issue I mentioned a couple of meetings ago. It seemed to go pretty easy and hopefully will last years from now.

The rest of the strechers that act as drawer slides, guides, and for table top screw downs were pinned with 23ga micro pins. Wow, there is a HUGE difference between 18 and 23ga. The biggest issue was that while the BORG will sell you a 23GA pinner, they don't carry the actual different length pins. Ugh, well Amazon to the rescue.

I've had to use the dining room table for finishing with it being just too darn cold for any of this in the garage. The downside was that I got a lot of dust nibs that needed to be removed on each layer. The painters pyramids work really well and I'm glad I picked them up.