Building the Game Table

[jwood314]

A Couple of Days Later

 

Well, the table BARELY fit into the Toyota Man Van, ended up scratching some of the plastic though, which made me seriously sad, which only relates to wood working in the sense that you should measure your moving device twice before cutting?

 

Finished up the inlay on the top of the table, still have the sides to complete, hopefully at some point this week.  Mainly have been sanding though, 8 plus hours of that in the last few days.  The table is coming along quite nicely, however, some of the experience has been painful.  Removed too much of the veneer in a few places.  Would have been easier if I had a better assembly table.  I put the inserts panels together on a covered dining room table, so I had a really hard time keeping everything flush.  In my efforts to sand everything flat, got a bit over zealous.  Live and learn, still looks pretty darn good though.  If I ever rework part of the table, it will be the inserts, after I have a nice flat assembly table to put them together on.

 

I have been experimenting with different colored Timbermate on gap filling, and I made some dye.  The dye is great, need to use a paint brush to get it exactly where I want it though, not that big of a deal.

 

Pic 1 is of the table top with the burl veneer up.  You can still see the need for Holly on the legs, this weekend or sooner hopefully on that.

 

Pic 2 is of the rosewood veneer up.  Worked very hard to get the panels to line back up.  I have to cut them into thirds to tape them up, the edges got all riply, and the veneer wasn't very flexible.  My take away is that rosewood is very temperamental veneer.  This was the hardest veneer to work with.

 

Pic 3 shows the interior space.  It is about 4 inches deep, which allows for a lot of storage, or leaving taller type miniature games up.  You can see some of the Timbermate ebony filler at work in the bottom left of the pic.  I was worried how this would work when it got all oiled up.

 

Pic 4 shows how amazing the rosewood looks with a little BLO applied, the wife was amazed.  It was hard to explain how much pop there would be when looking at sanded panels on the right.  You can also see some of the excessive sanding on the veneer, oh well,

 

Pic 5 shows the cup holder, sans insert.  The rosewood also looks amazing.  Not sure if I want to put any other finish on there, the BLO looks great, but I know that the cup holder inserts will most likely sweat, causing damage, so going to have to do something, unfortunately. 

 

Getting closer!

 

Cheers,

James

[..Kev]

Wow!  Super nice!

[shaneymack]

Awesome !

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

[wtnhighlander]

Man, that looks great!

[nerdbot]

Holy crap, that's a beautiful table!

[Cliff]

Obviously Marc's was great, but you took it and created a masterpiece. 

[rodger.]

better make some coasters as well, in case the drink holders are used up!

[BobInAustin]

Very nice!

[jwood314]

Thanks for the very high praise indeed.  There is a big difference though between modifying a design, and creating a new one.  Also, we were not as precise as Marc, although, a lot of the can be attributed to the equipment we had available.  No Marc, and I wouldn't have been inspired to take the leap!  so thanks again to Marc and his video series/design!

 

Even more time has passed........

 

Not a lot to show, the amount of work to progress made in pictures is approaching a very exponential number.  I have gotten the Holly in on the table legs, that is looking a lot better.  I have also got the sides of the inserts sanded out and BLO'd.  I was kind of stuck on how much sanding.  My Dad and I didn't have access to a cabinet saw, so doing this work on the Shopsmith, while doable, was really tough.  We ended up with some saw blade marks on the boards due to getting them to slide through the set up.  We waxed up everything, but on occasion it would bind.  If I sanded those marks out, it would decrease the size of the insert, and increase the size of the gap around the table.  So, minimal sanding, since you will not often see this, and some boiled linseed oil later, pretty happy with how it looks. 

 

So, now I am in a holding patern for 5 days.  I did apply shellac to the bottom of the table, used this as practice for working on the top.  I don't think I am going to use a cloth puck to apply, going to try a brush.  I need to let the BLO dry/cure before I apply some shellac over it, let that dry for a day, the start applying the High Performance from GF.

 

Slowly but surely moving forward to completion!

 

Cheers,

James

 

[Bell Forest Products]

We're happy to hear that Eric was able to help you through your first purchase with us! Ordering lumber sight unseen can be quite nerve racking. For that reason alone, we started the handpicked section. It really helps first time buyers see exactly what they'll get and it's awesome for anyone with a specialty project as they get to see everything we have and pick the best piece for their project. 

You've done a fantastic job with documenting your process! It's absolutely wonderful to see what everyone makes using their blanks/lumber. Clearly, you're a great woodworker! 

Keep it up! 

BFP

On 3/21/2016 at 9:24 AM, jwood314 said:

So, where to purchase the lumber for the table and what type of lumber?  After a few weeks of website surfing, I ended up going with Bell Forest Products, http://www.bellforestproducts.com/.  A couple of reasons, one, their selection was amazing, they had so many woods and burls that I have never even heard of, and a lot of these, you could buy in a small inlay board that isn’t too expensive.  Also, they have a section on hand-picking your board, this was really cool.  A huge concern of mine was spending several thousand dollars on lumber that I had never seen, made me a little nervous.  The handpicked board section, and Eric Poirer’s incredible help really helped me to overcome my trepidation with ordering site unseen for a large chunk of lumber.  If I can figure out how, I will attach some photos below of the order.  I need the lumber in mid-late April, so getting it super-fast wasn’t a concern, and Eric made several suggestions, and also delayed shipping to allow for a new shipment on their end to get the best possible lumber.  Eric was very familiar with the table, due to being a partner/preferred vendor/friend? with The Wood Whisperer, and was able to steer me to a list of wood species that would work well for the table.  I gave me a ROM for the different species, and I ended up going with Wenge instead of a dark Walnut.  I really like the dark look and grain pattern of Wenge.  I can’t wait to work with the wood.  I also picked up numerous inlay boards, accessory boards and box boards, more on all of those later.  Eric’s awesome customer service, both via email and phone calls, the 10% guild discount really made buying through them a no brainer.  I have seen and read about horror stories where if you are not buying 1000 bd ft at a time, you get no service, Bell Forest was just the opposite, I purchased only about 100 bd ft, but I was always treated well, and I can’t recommend these guys enough to go buy lumber.  I know I will buy from them for my next project.