Living Room Tables

[Chestnut]

4 minutes ago, Chet said:

I use this stuff from Epoch Wood. Two Sided Sandpaper

It works out to about .40 a sheet for a 4.5 X 2.75 inch piece.  But it's pretty durable and works well for getting in to tight spots and corners.  I use the 400 for all my between coat sanding.  

That's where i got the idea from honestly. Marc posting something about that stuff and i looked into it.Later i was playing around with the 3M paper and realized that because the adhesive was heat activated it made it really easy to fold precicsly and make 2 sided.

1 hour ago, treeslayer said:

I always keep a couple of rolls of PSA paper around for just such a task. 

I can't remember if PSA is always sticky or takes activation with pressure or heat. The nice thing about needing to heat activate the adhesive is it allows for easier folding. Super minor and isn't worth it to carry extra stock. I use what i have because I have it and if i don't fold it in half like this i don't use it.

[Chestnut]

Been busy on this but haven't updated because I've been too busy to transfer images and what not. This will be a longer post. I also missed some picture so sorry if it's word heavy and not picture heavy.

So i got the sides cut and sanded a while ago, then i got an order for 8 of those game boards i make so i dropped everything and batched those out. I spray them with the HVLP and i HATE doing that in my shop.

Coming back to the table I needed to get a top and bottom rail for the ends and make a way to hold everything in the shape that i want it to. The sides are like an accordion so if you just let them go the snap back. I remember the trick from the Morris chair build where Marc makes a groove in the side tails and fills in the gaps with pieces of wood. During my build I took that one step further and cut a gap between the two pieces and used that so the grain match would be better. I did the exact same thing here.

The sides ended up being 1/2" thick and instead of tring to dial in a dado stack perfectly to a random dimension I grabbed the Kerf master and had a perfect dado the first try.

So i took the rails and got groovy. Then i needed to prep the stock that would act as a space and make the rails look a bit better. I used the planer to get close and then nailed the fit with my hand plane. To cut the strips I used my miter gauge on the table saw. With a ZCI on both the gauge and the throat plate it made this small work easy.

I made all but one of the cuts to a dimension. For the last cut I put everthing together and used the piece to mark the exact length for the final cut. This way if my measurements were slightly off i wouldn't get a huge gap. I still got a little gap but it's from some extra sanding i did after the fact.

Getting the spacing set and gluing the parts in was VERY tricky but i managed it. There is no trick or easy way to do it. You just have to take your time and make sure to keep your parts organized. I used numbers and letters on various parts so nothing could get mixed up.

I had the internal pieces a bit proud of the surface to allow some fitment and figured i could just flush them up after the fact. To flush them up I just ran the piece through the table saw leaving a hair extra and then finished everything with the smoothing plane.

When I finished the first one I noticed that there were some gaps on the side. I wasn't totally thrilled with this but I'm too far along now. So i used a clamp on the sides to squeeze the grove together. The following pieces the gaps disappeared. I guess the side was just a bit to thin. In the following picture you can see how well the rain matches up.

By now I had to think about Joinery. I intended the sides to be the perfect width to allow for good space around a domino but still be nice and petite looking. Turns out I didn't account for the grove for the decorative side. I had to put everything together and plunge the mortise with the decorative sides in place. There isn't a ton of extra room around the mortise but everything ended up fitting ok. I took extra care to make sure the locations were nailed as i won't be able to use a wider mortise on the mating side as the shoulder won't cover it up.

With the joiner done i could do a test fit of the sides.

Now that the joiner is done it's time to do details. I didn't take pictures of this but that's ok it's pretty mundane. I wanted the main long rails to have a design similar to the sides so i used a drawing bow and tried to replicate that as best possible. I think it turned out well, subtle, but well. I cut to the line on the bandsaw and cleaned up with a spoke shave. I have been getting better with the spoke shave and am able to get a near surface ready finish with it. I'm not there yet but I've been able to remove most chatter marks with 120 grit instead of needing to really go at it with 80 grit.

I want to have a lower stretcher like most of the furniture in the room. it does 2 jobs: 1. I like the look of it 2. it adds a bit of strength to the piece and a bit of piece of mind that i can use it as a ladder when i need to.... . I wanted to use some thicker materiel but didn't want the look of thick material. I knew this would be low to the ground so I'm using a trick of the eye. I put a pencil 1/4" up from the bottom and 3/4" in from the sides and used my hand plane to connect the 2 lines making a 20 degree ish chamfer on the bottom.

The picture above shows the lines but they may be hard to see.

I did a full dry assembly and something was off. I didn't like the curves and delicate look of the whole project and the contrast of the square plain legs. So i grabbed the french curve and put a decorate foot on the bottom of each leg. Again I didn't take pictures of this but it was as simple as cut the line and clean up with a spoke shave.

Assembly!!!

The ling sides i wanted glued to the legs. This was more tricky than i thought with the weird decorative sides. I ended up having to wedge some stuff in there to be able to throw a clamp on. You can see the sand paper and it's hard to make out but i used the french curve and my paloni pocket ruler on the left side. That ruler is SUPER useful!

Oh as usual prior to assembly i did my usual sanding to #4 grit. If you are unfamiliar with #4 grit, it's 3 passes with a smoothing plane and your done cause sanding sucks.

Tonight was coat 1 of finish.

When i get this fully done I'll take some pictures of the room with the tables and I'll take this table outside and get some good pictures with a less busy background. It's HARD to see the details with all that clutter behind the image, my apologies.

[wtnhighlander]

That's looking great, Drew! I love how the flexible 'slats' worked out.

[Mark J]

2 minutes ago, wtnhighlander said:

That's looking great, Drew! I love how the flexible 'slats' worked out.

+1

[pkinneb]

I agree the slats are noted I may have to steal that idea someday  

[Minnesota Steve]

I like it!

[Bmac]

Great job with the decorative sides, turned out very nice. 

[SawDustB]

Pretty cool! Not at all what I was expecting, but I like it!

[Chestnut]

So the tables are DONE!

I was going to do 4 coats of finish but the 3rd was so nice and smooth i decided to stop there. I took the table outside and got some better pictures so the details are easier to see.

I'm really happy with how thin the lower rail looks. It's like 7/8" thick but looks like 1/2". I could probably stand on it.

The table overall is VERY light weight. Which it should be given it's very small 8"x 30".

Here it is in place.

I need to make some new rear speakers to match the front ones. I also need to do some touchup work on the front speakers as the finish started to fail in a couple spots from water because plants. I took a few pictures of the all the other tables in the room.

The duplicate table which was first is hidden under a mountain of game boards and tucked behind the morris chairs.

The sub table is tucked in the corner and usually has a blanket basket pushed up against it. All you ever see is the top. Which is good because the base is not attractive, it's not bad either though just meh.

My next project is going to be very obvious from the next picture.

All of that nice furniture and our dining room chairs are cheap folding chairs....

 

[Chet]

The last table is real unique looking.  Great job on all of them.  I know that my usual stopping point is three coats with water borne finishes.  That fourth coat is the one that can push it over the edge and make the finish plastic looking.

Looks like its getting close to leaf racking season for you too.

[Coop]

Fantastic job Nut!!!

[Bmac]

LOVE that first table. That really came out nice and very unique!

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Chet said:

Looks like its getting close to leaf racking season for you too.

I try to mulch them up as much as possible but i still end up loading my 4x8 trailer 2 feet deep with mulched leaves every year during peak drop.

[Coop]

Drew, I just realized that the angled thin strips will be shorter than the center and two outside ones by a smidge. Did you cut the center and two outside shorter or just didn’t worry about the difference? 

[Chestnut]

42 minutes ago, K Cooper said:

Drew, I just realized that the angled thin strips will be shorter than the center and two outside ones by a smidge. Did you cut the center and two outside shorter or just didn’t worry about the difference? 

You are quite right the thin strips that bend are shorter than the thicker pieces. The difference in length wasn't really noticeable so I just didn't bother with it. The groove is 3/16" deep which would be more than enough to cover up a slight difference if it was noticeable.

Coop you'd better be careful or we might start accusing you of knowing what you are doing .

[Coop]

10 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

Coop you'd better be careful or we might start accusing you of knowing what you are doing .

That would have been a rare moment and if ever, would have happened years ago! 

[pkinneb]

Very nice! You are making great progress on furnishing your home with your own pieces!

[treeslayer]

Well done Drew and excellent work as usual, the proportions are spot on and I really enjoyed the ride and learned lots of new stuff and you really need to do something about those chairs in your spare time

[Gary Beasley]

I do like the thin strips on the end, looks like they are cut from a single board and the connecting parts left uncut. There is a table in the library area at Peachtree Woodworking that a Gwinnett Woodworking member had made for the annual two by four contest that uses a cut style like that for the entire base. Had to be nerve wracking making the cuts on that.

[Chestnut]

31 minutes ago, Gary Beasley said:

I do like the thin strips on the end, looks like they are cut from a single board and the connecting parts left uncut. There is a table in the library area at Peachtree Woodworking that a Gwinnett Woodworking member had made for the annual two by four contest that uses a cut style like that for the entire base. Had to be nerve wracking making the cuts on that.

It's not as bad as you may think. I did a few experiments documented earlier in this thread and learned a few ticks that made it go much more smoothly. It's really surprising how little wood it takes to make a nice effect. The sides started out 1 3/8" to fill a space that is 5".

[gee-dub]

I have enjoyed returning to this thread several times.  Thanks for taking the time to demonstrate your methods and techniques.  The whole grouping works very well together.  The room has a feel of solid comfort and looks very inviting.