Quick curing outdoor finish for my wedding reception tables? Time is a factor :D

VizslaDad · June 21, 2018

Chestnut · June 21, 2018

How long did it take you to make the tables and how did you do it? I'm honestly super curious about that. Also curious on the bench construction.

VizslaDad · June 21, 2018

50 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

How long did it take you to make the tables and how did you do it? I'm honestly super curious about that. Also curious on the bench construction.

@Chestnut

All told, the eight tables took me approximately seven full days to build, including material pick-up time etc. It was hard work, but far more enjoyable (and in the end, much prettier) than spending $4000 on rental tables.

My large shop tools (bandsaw, tablesaw, drill press, router table, jointer, planer) are in storage at the moment. This, in combination with the fact that I had to build these things quickly, heavily influenced my design and construction approach. I worked alone, in my driveway, with my mitersaw + track saw + 18v tools.

We were going for a rustic, Pacific Northwest outdoor vibe, so I built the tops out of nice 3/4" VG doug fir and knotty pine veneered plywood, banded with solid doug fir. The tops were thickened and stiffened up with shop birch ply (8" strips on the short ends, 4" strips on the long and down the center) glued and screwed to the top sheet. The edge banding I glued and attached using 16g finish nails.

Three of the tables have trestle bases constructed out of doug fir 4x4s. The trestle ends were joined with 4 of the biggest dominos the DF 500 can cut per 4x4. I used pocket screws to clamp those components. The trestle stretchers are attached using cross dowels. The tops were joined to the trestles via screws through the trestle legs and pocket holes in the upper stretcher.

Note: building transportable furniture using construction grade lumber and knockdown hardware via handheld power tools may infuriate even the most patient among us.

The remaining five tables were set upon 2x4 sawhorses slapped together using Home Depot HDX sawhorse brackets (https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-5-5-in-10-Compartment-Sawhorse-Bracket-SH107/202533538). Note that HF sells a similar product for a couple dollars less, and they are black. I would have gone that route had I to do it over again. I joined the tops to the sawhorses using pocket screws.

Why different bases? The trestles looked nice in pictures but were a bear to transport, so I limited their number. The sawhorses were very easily transported.

The benches were built on site. The guy I rented the houses from where we had our rehearsal dinner (and most of my wife's family stayed) as well as the reception venue provided a bunch of rough-sawn cedar he'd milled right on the property. I whacked that stuff into ~4' x ~12" pieces with my circ saw for the bench seats. The bases were made from 2x4s pocket screwed together (the legs were simply face-screwed t the "i" stretcher piece, see below) and the tops. Two of my friends manned the kreg jig making the stretcher "i" pieces, while my father-in-law-to-be and another friend attached legs as I cut them. All told, the benches took ~5 hours...not bad for 32 pieces of furniture, none of which broke during the festivities!

FYI, I used ~46 8' 2x4s for the benches.

I have provided a link to my SketchUp file (I didn't end up running with the 8' bench design in the pics below, as the shorter benches made more sense from a usability and construction standpoint):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujcqd5lvxtiwx18/wedding_tables_benches_forWWOL.skp?dl=0