Michigan Chocolate Table

[gee-dub]

OK, a little weak on this post. I wanted to mention that I keep a can with a block of paraffin in it to wipe the soles of my planes with while using. In the same can I keep an old piece of t-shirt that I dribble with some 3-in-1 oil. I use this to wipe down my hand tools every so often.

This has kept them in fine, rust free condition for decades.

I realized that if I tried to make the table base by the seat of my pants I was going to end up in trouble. So, I did a quick Sketch Up to give me some guidelines for dimensions.

I want to keep the base really simple to allow the slabs to be "on display".

The boss and I decided to make the base a bit darker than the slabs so that it will visually fade to the background. Walnut comes in shades of everything from light gray to dark brown. I selected a couple of pieces of darker material from the racks so we will see how it goes. I thought I would make a little more progress today than I have but . . . I have been spirited away to make some of my famous "Sloppy Joes" sandwiches for dinner. More tomorrow.

[Mark J]

17 hours ago, gee-dub said:

have a small square that I keep on the jointer. This lets me quickly confirm that things are where they should be when I reposition the fence.

Woodcraft has a similar square on sale this Oct (2025).

[Chet]

On 9/28/2025 at 11:25 AM, gee-dub said:

.use a handsaw to cut all the way trough at each end and then use those kerfs as markers to lay the track to allow me to cut from the opposite side.

That is a great idea that I would never have thought of.

[gee-dub]

I cut the shelf to final dimension.

I had an on-the-fly design change. I was just going to rest the shelf on cleats but decided that a captured leg/shelf joint looked cooler.

I'm sure I have beat this horse to death . . . these Husky tables go low enough for jointer infeed/outfeed and high enough for bandsaw infeed/outfeed. Love these silly things.

Face jointed and planed to thickness.

One great reason for jointing and then planing is you have two parallel reference faces. This means you can always edge-joint downhill.

Measure twice, cut once doesn't always apply to saw cuts. I check intermittently while milling to make sure things have not wandered off track.

Now that the blanks are jointed, planed and edge jointed it is off to the tablesaw to cut the blanks out.

Rinse and repeat.

[wtnhighlander]

@gee-dub, I'm sure you mentioned it before,but is the lift mechanism of those Husky tables electric,or mechanical?

[Coop]

For once, I have the right answer to a question. They are mechanical. After @gee-dub posting about them last year, one went on my Christmas wish list and it’s great. I received one that has two drawers. If I had room, I’d have one or two more. 

[gee-dub]

Yep.  Manual.  In an odd twist of fate the hex socket for the handle on the table is the same as the hex drive on my router lift.  If I am in a hurry I just grab the drill motor I use for the lift and have at it.

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

@gee-dub I'm never sure what's more impressive - your shop, or the work that comes out of it. 

Actually, it's the latter. But the former is pretty dang sweet too. 

[Mark J]

1 hour ago, Ron Swanson Jr. said:

@gee-dub I'm never sure what's more impressive - your shop, or the work that comes out of it. 

Actually, it's the latter. But the former is pretty dang sweet too. 

Hear hear!

[gee-dub]

You guys are too kind.  Back when I was working the .com insanity I decided that when I retired I wanted to get back into woodworking. 20 years later I built my dream shop.  Some folks retire and buy an RV, a boat, or travel Europe . . . I built a shop.  LOML found early on that having a hubby who could build her pretty much whatever she wanted (within my skill set) certainly greased the wheels .

Meanwhile back at the events that help keep us humble . . . I swear I emptied that cyclone barrel a month ago !?!  I didn't think I had done all that much work but, my reminder went off on my phone and I opened up the cyclone shed for regular maintenance.  Low and behold . . . filled to the brim.  Got that taken care of and swept up a bit in the shed while I was at it.  The good thing about venting outside is that if the barrel fills up the spoil just blows past and right out into the world .  I also checked the Shop Vac bins but they are fine till next time.

I dug out my old Darrell Peart Blacker Chair Leg jig

I want the base to be pretty innocuous to show off the slabs but I am starting to feel like it needs (read in a Doc Brown voice) a little style.  Took me a while to find it.  Thank goodness for that peg wall.  There's a lot of stuff on it but, almost everything is on there somewhere.  I'll post later on the frame/stand final sizing efforts and we'll see where we end up.

 

[gee-dub]

All ZCI's have a wear factor. This is not necessarily due to blade fluctuation but rather due to the abrasive nature of the spoil passing through the slot. They are a wear-part like brakes on a car. Sooner or later you have to replace them. When I want to use the saw kerf as an alignment tool but am not yet ready to replace the ZCI I stick a bit of tape over the slot.

Then I cut through it. I now know right where the blade is going to pass.

I cut the base parts to final length. I tend to mark things so I can quickly orient them if that happens to be the best look. There are definitely times when flipping or rotating a part gives me a better look. I just like to know where I am starting from . . . such a geek.

I bought this set of collars back when I lived in Silly-Cone-Valley. They were a bargain "Woodcraft" brand but have held up for a couple of decades so who am I to wonder?

These "Spring Lock Washers" are great for template collars. I have not had a template come loose during use since I started using them oh-so-long-ago. They are available various places but Peachtree has a good price on them still.

I wrote the template collar, bit size, and depth setting on the Darrell Peart jig and am glad I did. I haven't used it in so long I never would have remembered. Anyway I install the bit and collar, set the depth. The camera seems to have lit up the whole display but, trust me it is .88".

Here's the cut on a piece of scrap just to make sure I still remember how to use this thing.

And with a swipe or two of sandpaper it looks like so.

The actual design element will be closer to the floor than the test piece. I wonder if I will get that far today?

[wtnhighlander]

@gee-dub, how much do you think it would 'soften' the look to make that feature with a small diameter 'bowl & tray' bit?

[gee-dub]

Here's an example of the actual feature.

It is pretty sharp and dramatic.  Certainly using a bowl bit . . . 

. . . or other large radius bit would create more of a dish than a sharp shoulder if you wanted that.  I have used bowl bits for dresser top valets . . .

. . . and other sorts of tray inserts and they work quite well.

 

[wtnhighlander]

I agree. There don't appear to be any bowl bits on the market with a small enough corner radius to keep that feature looking clean.

[gee-dub]

Not intended to be a Domino tutorial but, we're here so what the heck? I wanted some 5mm dominoes that were longer than what I had so I quickly made some from scrap in the burn pile.

Layout is typical for a floating tenon regardless of how the mortise and tenon are made.

The beauty of the Lee Valley Joinery table is that once you have your layout on one piece, you don't have to mark or measure for identical pieces. The stops and fence do the work.

The "offset registration gauge" (talk about expensive words) lets you reverse the stop precisly for things like miters and double tenons. Double tenons in my case.

Reverse the stop and position it with the offset doo-hicky.

Cut your opposing mortise.

Ta-da!

Slip in the floating tenons and you end up here.

A few more to go.

[wtnhighlander]

@gee-dub, do notice any difference working with self-made tenons as compared to the factory made dominos? Just wondering if the compressed wood & grooving is really that important.

[gee-dub]

@wtnhighlander - I have used floating tenons since before any of us heard of the Domino.  I used to use (and still sometimes do) the Mortise Pal. 

I have used factory Dominoes and shop made in combination on the same pieces of furniture with success ever since I got the Domino; 2018 I think(?).  With modern adhesives we seem to be able to be more flexible in our construction methods.

Some projects require large tenons.

I don't have it in me to buy the large Domino so the Mortise Pal comes in handy for these.  The smaller Domino approach is multiple tenons which works in many cases. 

[gee-dub]

My flow kind of got disrupted yesterday so I am trying to get my rhythm back .

You can really appreciate the difference between a 5" and a 6" ROS on larger surfaces.

The dust collection on this relatively inexpensive Ridgid is pretty impressive. Even after sanding both slabs my particle counter is well within the safe range.

I need to cut the notches for the legs. I use a magnetic stop and a stand off block at the bandsaw.

Since it is cross-grain I will probably eliminate the rest of this waste with a jig saw

and then clean up with a chisel as opposed to just chopping it all out with a chisel.

[gee-dub]

I was able to squeeze in a little this morning. There are a lot of ways to do this on thick material. I chose a jig saw to remove the bulk of the waste.

Then I chewed up the leftovers a bit. You can see that I also cut a little notch to register the chisel to later. I know a lot of folks do this for dovetails . . . same function.

I bring the slab to a work surface and set it on a bench hook. I made this one out of an old kitchen pullout cutting board from a kitchen remodel a few houses ago. Basically it just lets me chop all the way through the material and into the supporting structure.

Here you get the general idea.

We are having visitors today so I will probably not get back to this till tomorrow.

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

Nice clean work!!

[gee-dub]

The tricky part here will be to stabilize the base/stand structure but still allow the slabs to move throughout the seasons.  I finally landed on a rigid stand structure with room for the slabs to flex.  This is no invention of mine.  I decided on it after reviewing a lot of people's work with slabs that have been doing this for years.  I really enjoy that the woodworking community is so sharing of methods and techniques.  I have a friend who is a photographer.  These guys are brutally secretive about how they did this or that and how they got a result.  So different than our community ;-)

[wtnhighlander]

@gee-dub, consider that woodworking has been around essentially since the beginning of mankind, where photography as we know it is little more than a century old. Those guys will come around, eventually! 

[gee-dub]

Hoo-boy! I was so eager to get back to this project I may have been a little over eager. I was chiseling out the leg recesses for the lower shelf. I was so focused on chiseling to the line that I moved out over an area of unsupported material near the natural edge of the slab.

Yep, I blew right through it . . . nice big blowout. As soon as I tapped the chisel and got almost zero resistance I realized what I had done. The location is on the underside of the lower shelf and behind the leg so Lady Luck was with me. Despite the fact that the area could be hot pink in color and still not be seen I do need to structurally repair the area.

I carefully fan out the "splattered" area and drizzle epoxy into the wound. The area is part of the natural curve of the natural edge. Fortunately one of my "uneven clamping cauls" fit the area pretty well. I wrapped some packing tape on the arc and used the semicircle as a caul to force the "splatter" back into the slab.

Once mostly cured I pull the block and peel the tape. I will let this cure for a while more and then finish up this last notch with a rasp. I don't want to go banging against the repaired area with a chisel and mallet no matter how well supported.

On the upside, the other three notches came out great.



Meanwhile the leg/stand/base(?) has plenty of effort left before I start putting things together.

[gee-dub]

This is so anticlimactic .  Had I known the repair was going to go so well I would have gotten a picture of the "before" condition.

The area under my finger looked like a Bugs Bunny 'El Exlodo' cigar scene .

The fanning out of the damage allowed me to drizzle epoxy in.  The various pieces of tape to keep things contained and tape-wrapped clamping cauls let me push everything back in place.  I am considering myself very lucky on this one 

 

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

That's the mark of craftsmanship. It's not in not making mistakes, it's in fixing them so no one will ever know. Tip of the hat to you sir!