Bad day in the shop


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We have been working on a custom ordered "community table" for a coffee shops for about 5 weeks now. Should have only taken three, but my wife had a baby and then a million little things were getting in the way.

I've been excited about this piece because the shop's interior design is way up my alley - modern with lots of reclaimed materials. Clean lines, but not cold.

Finally got some finish on the top yesterday, and it looks awesome.

Today I was finishing up the joinery on the base and then assembling. I was going to pin all the joints with dowels. Before I start drilling the holes, I decide to try the "draw bored" method. The table's huge, and I figured any added strength would be goo. Now, I've never tried it before, and of course I didn't bother making some test pieces.

I maked and drilled all my holes, basically "eye-balling" the off-set on the inner pieces.

I go to assemble and find that nothing lines up at all. Not only did I offset too much, but I didn't make sure my drill press was square, so it was all extra wack.

So I start trying to make stuff work, and fix stuff by drilling out material (defeating the purpose) and cracked some wood and basically screwed stuff up.

Ended up attaching parts with lag bolts. The "pins" will be just for show.

Basically, the lesson was, if you're going to try something to push your skill, don't wing it on a custom ordered piece of furniture.

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Congrats Dad  :D  As far as your build, I feel for ya. Nothing worse than having a project in the final stages and being all proud and have something going wrong :angry: . Even though you got things patched up it's still not the same, but nothing ventured nothing gained.You'll knock em dead the next time.

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Yeah, I am happy about the baby. And I should focus on that. We have a little girl, and this one's a boy.

I think the problem was my pride. I was so excited about my design that I didn't carefully plan everything out.

The base is together now. And looks pretty good.

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I also learned the hard way not to test out new techniques on a project. Play with some scraps and find your errors then use on a job. I also do the least visible joints first so my best work is on the most visible. I call it the practice effect, improvement through repetition .

Please post some pictures and congrats on the growing family!

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I'm going to try to do a write up, but if I can't, I will post some pics. Just a couple more coats of poly and it's all done.

I'll try to get some pics outside and in its new home. Our shop is a mess and poorly lit, so makes for terrible pics.

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Really cool color. Maybe its the angle, but it looks a little top heavy to me. Are the feet really a good bit narrower than the top, or is that an illusion?

The table top is in fact heavier than the base. The feet are 22" wide while the top is 30" (an improvement from the original 18"). I admit I was a little nervous before assembling. But the table is immensely stable. There's no movement in the base. I don't think I'll have issues with racking since the M&T's are so large and also pinned (they actually are; it's the tops and bottoms of the pedestals that are lag bolted). And it does't tip. I climbed on top of it and it felt sturdy the whole time.

I think because the base still has considerable weight, and the whole table is very heavy (easily a couple hundred pounds), it keeps the center of gravity low and just pins the whole piece to the ground.

I also really love the color. While I certainly don't think iron acetate is perfect for every situation, I really do love the tones it produces. And the deep blue-black you get from oak. And I love it for our stuff, since it's all mixed woods and generally on the "rustic" side. It showcases the mixed species but in complimentary tones. I'm surprised how little difference there can be between even oak and maple with an oil based stain (I know this because we just finished two smaller desks/tables whose tops were equal parts oak and maple, accidentally.).

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It is 1.5". And yes, we get some crazy figure sometimes. Obviously we get a lot of junk. About 2/3 is firewood. But I am astonished at some of the crazy grain and figure we get. I think it's because the wood isn't sorted at all, so the "defects" that cause the cool stuff are still there.

Unless of course by "burly" you meant beefy. Then yes. We get them from a machine shop that stamps out metal parts form enormous rolls of sheet metal. So the rolls are shipped on the pallets. And they are chunky. The pedestals are 3.75" square. We don't get much that big. But a lot are pretty chunky.

For anyone considering doing something with pallet wood, that would be my recommendation for a source. All the wood's untreated. It's almost all hardwoods (oak, ash, maple, sycamore, and surprisingly poplar; we also get big chunks of pine). And they're not that hard to get apart because each is only 4 pieces of wood.

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Welp, I just committed my first public woodworking misnomer. I didn't even consider the word burly to mean anything other than beefy when I was typing. To add salt to the wound my naievity kept me from thinking that pallets would ever need to be build sturdier than to hold a few cases of our favorite adult beverages.

 

Pretty cool source you've got there!

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Yeah, I am happy about the baby. And I should focus on that. We have a little girl, and this one's a boy.

I think the problem was my pride. I was so excited about my design that I didn't carefully plan everything out.

 

On the pride, design, and careful planning, your are talking about the table, right :(  Just kidding :D  The two sentences together like that, I couldn't resist!! Congrats on the new arrival and I think you guys turned out a neat looking table.

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