The Kitchen Table

Like I said before it has been a long while since posting about the last project. Turns out parenthood is a great inescapable time vortex where only "important" things get done. Yet since the birth of my beautiful baby boy I have found some time to do a few projects.

But before I get into that, I would like to show you some of the latest arrivals in my shop area:
Number one is the Table Saw I got for Father's Day!

Isn't she purty!?

The table saw is a very important piece of equipment in any woodworking shop; without it you are doomed. DOOOOMMED!

Now she may not look like much,  though I assure you she is a work-horse and purrs like a kitten. I purposefully shopped for a saw that was around 40-50 years old. Why? Because they were built to last back then. If I was to buy a saw with the durability this saw has, I would have to pay upwards of $700-1000. And the great thing is I got this beauty from craigslist for only $115.

She's got a nice, solid fence that is square and it also accommodates a router on the other half of the table. Now all I need is a new fence ($$$) that can extend to about 52 inches for wider boards. Some other time.

this isn't a very good picture.

The next piece I got was from a garage-sale here in town. It is also an essential piece of equipment. It is the wondrous Jointer. It is for making flat square edges on pieces of wood so that you can join them together. The blades were in pretty bad shape so I borrowed a new set from my father-in-law. Cuts wood like butter. This machine if new would have cost me about $600-900. I got it for $25. Yeah I know. It's like God wants me to spend lots of time in the basement while neglecting my husbandy duties. (Honey, if you are reading this, pay no attention to that last sentence.)

I have received some other goodies as well but I can introduce those as they come into the story.



Now a little back-story for the table. First off why a table? Well to make a long story short our neighbors downstairs decided to move out. The vacancy sparked the interest of my parents who obviously had an attraction in seeing their grandson while having there own place to stay. So they decided to rent the place as a vacation home when they would visit from NV. Naturally they needed things to fill their new place: furniture, dishware, silverware, kitchen supplies, etc. I of course instantly insisted on making a kitchen table for them because it would be cheaper and I can tailor it to the size of their kitchen.

The Plans: ...uuhhh....I didn't have any plans. I pretty much winged it.

The Materials: I decided on a low budget for the wood. I bought select pine wall studs from the Frenchmen. They were a little wonky, but I made them work - nothing my joiner couldn't fix (I took those boards down a good bit before they were usable).

The first step was to make all of the boards (for the table top) in conformity with each other. (As you can see from the joiner pic above, there was a lot of waste in this process. I think I filled two 40 gallon drums full of joiner shavings that I later used as mulch for the garden).

To use the jointer, run off two sides so they are perfectly 90 degrees with each other; then you run the board through the table saw. You want to create completely square surfaces when joining multiple boards together to make larger pieces. Running the now flat edged and square boards through the table saw makes a parallel cut with the other side.











Now, do that about 20 more times and you get this:

Now that we have our boards all squared up, we now need to use a biscuit joiner to join the ends together.

biscuit joiner

The biscuit joiner, for those who don't know, creates an oval-shaped cut into the wood so as to fit a "biscuit" into the space to create a stronger joint as opposed to just joining the flat long grain together.

mmm..biscuits

The ends joined together to created the long partitions for the table look like this:

"Ooo thas nice joint" you might say. Can you see the seam? Oh shut-up! No you can't!

The object is to create a seamless joint like this!
















Multiply that by 10 or so and then you get this:

Then we join the long grain together! WEEEE!!

Yes. I borrowed clamps from Freddie again. 

Multiply that by 10 or so...

now....WE SAND!

Once the table top is nice an smooth, we set that aside and make those gams...I mean the legs. I decided to use Douglas Fir 4X4's - these required a little more time to get square and to bring them down to a size. Here is a comparison!

The top block is the raw. The bottom is the finish.

Once I had four legs to work with, I decided to put a 4 sided taper on each of them. This hard. I looked online to see how people did it: Some used a complicated jig you can buy or another jig that wasn't as complicated; or you could make your own. I didn't want more work so I opted for the less complicated one....which I borrowed from Freddie. Even with the jig there was this complex math voodoo you had to invoke in order to make your cuts. (It reminded me of the explanation of "how to fold a fitted sheet.") So I gave it a shot....

*@#%&!!!

Needless to say I screwed up. Twice.

*sigh*

So I prepared TWO MORE gams...I mean legs (I had just enough material left over) and tried it again, this time without the voodoo. I wondered why it had to be so freakin' complicated. I eventually figured out that all I needed to do was to draw the line in which to cut the taper and then make that line parallel to the fence (duh). That's it! No voodoo. None!

The result:

Following the line and everything! Oh and there is the jig on the right of the stock.

Now this only worked for two cuts. Why? Because once you cut two sides, to cut the third side you need to put back the material you cut from an already tapered end (plus the wide of the blade) in order for the saw to cut anything.

Confusing? Yes. Can I explain it better? Probably not. All you need to know is that it worked.
Once all the tapers are cut the final product for the leg looks like this:

Did that 4 times and then made some table skirts:

Them some sweet gams.

Next I had to make room for the mounting brackets for the gams....err...legs.

So I used the table saw to eat away at a corner at a 45 degree angle. 

It looks a bit sketchy, don't it?
Not safe? ......hey look over there! *runs away*

Once I had all of the brackets fitted, I then put in the leg bolts. The trick for this was to have two nuts on the bolt and tighten them against each other, so then all you had to do was use a wrench on the top nut to drive the bolt into the wood.

Next I decided to spice the table top up a bit (with the suggestion of my dear brother in-law) by cutting a chamfer edge along the bottom edge of the table. A chamfer is just a 45 degree bevel. 

Next I lined up my skirt and drove them in with screws and some glue:

I plugged the holes with some oak plugs I had left over from fixing me wife's' rocking chair. 

Next was driving in the mounting brackets and doing a run with everything together:

Everything is now sanded and fitted to a satisfying degree so now all is left is the stain and finish. 

I hung the legs from the rafters to apply the stain and the finish.

The same was done with the table as well, with some extra ingenuity thrown in.

Now the stain:

And finally the finish. I used a gloss high durability wipe-on Poly which is a lot thinner than regular polyurethane; which meant I had to put on several coats to get the desired feel. But after a week or so, this is what I ended up with:

Turned out well.

And now the Final Product!

The table wasn't wobbly at all...Quelle Suprise!

I love the grain.

Originally, in my delusions of grandeur, I decided to make chairs also. I naturally ran out of time before the parents arrived, so we settled with a nice Church rummage sale find. These chairs don't exactly match but they will do. Maybe I will do another project with making the chairs at another time.

SWEET GAMS!!

Well there you have it! One pine kitchen table. The one thing that I would change if I ever make a table or furniture out of pine again is to use an epoxy bar-top finish. The durability of the poly isn't great with pine. 

It looks nice though, just don't set anything on it...

The next installment will be a shoe closet for the wife. 

Thanks for reading!

Pax,

NPM