Blog

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

Earlier this summer our daughter said she was moving into a smaller apartment and would need a new kitchen table. I volunteered to make her one, and the experience may have changed me more than I realize.

OK, so the actual conversation was a bit more involved, and with not just a bit of sceptisism on her part that

1. I could do the project, I have never truly made a woodworking project
2. That the project would be done on time, as a great many of my project around the house have been stalled for years

The project criteria were outlined in the following conversation:

Me: so, what size are we taking about?
Her: 42 by 30 inches, that’s what would fit in the space.
Me: OK, what style, shaker, arts & crafts…?
Her: I’m thinking mid-century modern.
Me: .oO(I hate mid-century modern. It just looks so tacky with no real style, just a bunch of factory looking pieces assembled at odd angles.)
BTW, the .oO(…) represents a thought bubble, I did not say this outloud.
Me: OK, what type of wood were you thinking, oak or perhaps maple?
Her: I would like cherry, with a nice darker finish.
Me: (rolling of the eyes)

With that, the project scope was outlined: a 42 x 30 mid-century modern kitchen table made from Cherry.

Just a note here that my impression of mid-century modern were those plastic chairs with the tapered chrome legs we had in grade school. My perception and prejudice were about to change.

I bought the cherry at a local hardwood store and the next time she visited, we chose the pieces that would make up the table top. I made suggestions about flipping some of the pieces so the irregularities and sapwood would be on the bottom of the table, she chose which pieces would make up the surface and which order they looked best considering running of the grain and color. We also discussed what the leg assembly might be like. I had viewed a few YouTube videos and showed her examples of what they looked like. I was not thrilled with the ones I’d seen as they all had at least two legs that were co-plainer and my vision was to have each leg in it’s own plain at a 15 degree angle from being perpendicular to the top.

I had just glued up the table top and was about to start on the leg assembly the next morning when I came across a Mid-Century Modern dining room table build YouTube video from Griffin of Altered Grain Custom. Griffin was very frank about the issues he had with the build, but the leg assembly was exactly what I envisioned when starting this project. So the next morning I changed my plan from assembling two legs at a time each connected by a stretcher, to each leg being independently attached at 45 degrees to a stretcher that ran across the bottom of the table. Now this really changed the design and added some complexity to it. The material I had purchased would work, but it meant a lot more jointery.

Each leg was composed of two parts, the main leg and a small piece to connect the top of the leg to the stretcher. Now, I like how Griffin did his at a 45 degree angle but being much less experienced I thought a mortise and tenon would be better. After cutting out the main part of the leg (using a template for the leg shape) I had to create a jig to get back the 90 degree corner at the top of the leg as it was currently about 15 degrees as the legs were cut from one piece roughly 6″ x 8′ of 6/4.

Mistake #1: My first error that I did not realize at the time came when I did not properly select the wood for the short pieces of the leg to match the main portion. The shorter segments were not as “red” as the legs, and upon glue-up I will be wondering about this.

Sidenote: I had not yet come across Eric – ENCurtis who has since enlightened me about selecting and so much more. (sigh)

Lesson: I will study the wood grain and color carefully when selecting wood.

At this point I am starting to see two things: mid-century modern could be beautiful, and I really love and miss the creative process of making something!

Another Sidenote: before spending 20+ years in web development, I worked as a mechanic and manager in bike shops, spent time in maintenance at a manufacturer, and even before that studied art at university. Those old skills left dormant were resurfacing.

Tweaking the Top
Being Comfortable with Tapering

Getting back to the top I noticed one thing: the top was too thick (I used six 6/4″ by 5″ planks) for the look I was going for. Have an edge that was over an inch thick was unacceptable. For over a week I thought up ways to make a bevel in the top that would take the edge down to 3/4″. The idea of putting the top on edge through the table saw frightened me, not just for the safety issue, but one slip and that top would be ruined. I saw one youtuber take a grinder to the edge and then proceed to sand: yipes! My sights focused on some type of router sled that would be fit into a slanted base and would run across the surface of the table. (I had also not seen the Foureyes Furniture video which shows their way of doing this)

So, I set up a jig which consisted of two parts:

• A base: which held the table top in place and supported two rails (I used pipes from a couple of pipe clamps)
• A small router sled: which ran across the rails of the base assembly

Now, I have not yet seen this done by a YouTuber, so perhaps I will make a post/video on how this can be done. Once I had everything in place, I proceeded to move the router up and down in the router sled which produced a bunch of groves in the first few inches that I knew would take a lot of sanding. I then took a chance on running the sled up and down the rails, and what a difference! Much better results running the router across the rails taking just a bit of material at a time.

With the taper done and my being very happy with the results I then took a belt sander to the table top. Mistake #2. With 120 grit on the sander it had left groves in the surface that I didn’t see until I had been sanding with my random orbital sander for a bit.

Lesson: I will never use a belt sander on a surface like that again.

This took a lot of extra sanding, but when completed the result was beautiful. The profile and surface were so well done.

Legs Come Together

To create the leg assembly I put the piece of cherry I was going to use as a stretcher across the length of the upside down table top and then brought two legs over to see where they should be brought to the base. I transcribed and measured so I knew how long the stretcher should be and where the legs would attach to the stretcher. The legs needed to be cut at a 45 degree angle to meet the stretcher, and the stretcher needed to be cut to length.

After cutting both, I decided to attach the legs by drilling holes through each set of two legs on the end of the stretcher using three dowles.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!