Breadboard ends and chamfering

In order to put the breadboard ends on, I needed to route out a tenon on the ends of the table. I built a jig to guide the router so the end would be perfectly straight and square.

Then I routed a mortise out of the breadboard ends. After doing a test fit, I realized that my mortise was angled, resulting in the breadboard end flaring up at an angle from the table. Argh!

So I turned to my trusty planer sled. I angled the rests on one side and ran the board through the planer. It worked a charm! Thankfully I had cut the breadboard thicker than necessary for just such eventualities as this.

I put the breadboard end on and checked the joint with the table. I rigged a way to clamp the board on while I...

...drilled the dowel holes from below. Normally I would just turn the table over to drill the holes (that's what I did with the benches) but the table is so heavy I can't turn it over by myself, and nobody else was home at the time, so I just drilled from below.

Here are the drilled holes.

I used the drill to elongate the end holes to allow for expansion.

I cleaned up the holes with a hand file.

The center hole is on the right and the two elongated end holes can be seen.

I cut the 1/2" dowels on the table saw using my trusty push stick.

After applying glue at the center...

...I pounded in the dowels and clamped again.

Now to the edges! I fitted my router with a chamfer bit.

And routed the table edges.

Now I'll add some structural work to the underside for attachment to the pedestal, and also make and fit the skirt. After lots and lots of sanding, it's off to finishing! (The picture below is actually before I chamfered the edges. Forgot to get one with the edges done.)

Table top and starting the pedestals

Here's a picture of the final table glue up.

And the result!

With the edges trimmed:

 The table top is now safely ensconced in my basement. Not only is it unwieldy and takes up a lot of space in my tiny workshop, but I wanted it in a safe environment where I wasn't liable to ding it with a tool. It will stay down there until I've finished the pedestals and am ready to add the bread board ends.

Now on to the pedestals! Here's what the bench pedestal will look like. Of course, there will be bevels and other decorative minutiae, but this gives the general idea.

I decided to start with the main hourglass pieces. The first thing to do is to rough cut them with the jigsaw (the red tool lying on the table). Maybe someday I'll have a nice bandsaw that would make this process much faster...

5 down, lots more to go...

After the rough cut I take my template piece and fix it to the piece I'm working on with a couple of screws. Don't worry, I always screw it to the insides of the pieces -- the faces will be hidden. Then to the router table. I've loaded a flush trim bit (the red cylinder next to the wood in the picture). The bearing on the top of the bit rolls against the template piece (on the top) and cuts away waste material from the lower piece, until the lower piece matches the template exactly.

Once I have all 16 pieces routed I do the glue up. Each pedestal will have four hourglass pieces face glued together. I could glue them all at once, but I decided to just glue two at a time, to make sure there are no gaps.

When clamping, the glue makes the two pieces of wood tend to slide all over the place, making it tough to keep the pieces aligned. I decided to put dowels between the pieces to keep them aligned.

Then I apply the glue and spread with an old credit card.

Then align the pieces and slide onto the dowels with a couple of taps with a mallet.

Clamp down and clean off squeeze-out. I've clamped to my table saw to hold the two pieces completely flat.

Here's the result of the three glue ups for one pedestal.

Now to sanding. The convex lower part is easy -- I'll just use my random orbital sander.

But the concave upper part presents a problem:

Using a flat sander would just make gouges and getting a nice finish would be near impossible. I poked around to see what oscillating drum sanders, the correct tool for the job, would cost. Yikes! $200 for the cheapest one. I thought about using my trusty drill-mounted drum sander...

...but it's just to small.

Getting a smooth finish would be tough and would take an awful long time, especially once I get to the table hourglass pieces, which will be even thicker. So I decided to make my own. I got a couple ideas on the internet and here's the result:

It cost me $2.50. The two designs I borrowed from glued the sandpaper directly to the PVC pipe, making changing out sandpaper a real pain. Martin had the brilliant idea of cutting a groove in the pipe and letting that clamp the sandpaper in place. It worked a charm!

And the result: a beautiful, thick, heavy hourglass piece.

Bench tops, table top and an interrupting conference

 I finished the glue-up of both bench tops. Beautiful, huh?

I had to go back to the raw pile for more wood for the table top. Here I am free-handing a really big piece of lumber.

I finally got the table top all ready to glue up. I plan to glue one edge at a time, so I can make sure every junction is perfectly square. I got the first glue-up done (woohoo!) but then I had to leave for a conference in beautiful Zurich, Switzerland. It was a great conference in a wonderful little city, but I admit I did do some pining for the table. Anyhow, here are some pictures of Zurich.

But now I'm back and ready to get going on the table again! In the next post you'll see the table top!

Bench Top B!

I've named the two benches 'A' and 'B'. While benchtop A is still in pieces, I just glued up benchtop B. Well, actually, I edge-glued the main body of the benchtop. The breadboard ends will come later.

Anyway, with the three pieces finally face-glued to thickness, I ran them each through the planer using my fancy-dancy new sled that I built to take the twist out.

With the warp gone, I ran them over the jointer to square up the edges.

Then I cut grooves for the biscuits. Biscuits are little flat football-shaped pieces of wood that help keep the wood aligned during glue-up. In the past, biscuits were used for strength also, but wood glues are so strong these days that they're not needed for that anymore. My sister-in-law Vicky doesn't even use biscuits in her glue-ups.

And, we're ready! Now apply some glue...

And clamp.

That's Laren in the background making a boomerang.

Tune in next time to see what the benchtop looks like in all it's glued glory!