2.8m Long Table - conclusion

[Togalosh]

Hello Gents,

At last I have some spare time to get online & tell you how it all turned out & thank you for your advice.

It went really well in the end - phew !! The customer & the interior designer were very pleased with it & it went in place without any hiccups & it is solid. It was a bloody hard slog though & I had to rope in some hired help to finish it off i.e. make the top's fixings, final sand & apply the goddamn horrible liming wax which spoilt the look of it in my opinion. I hired a big van too... & still I made a nice profit from it - hallelujah ! It paid better than my day job - just.

The main trouble was
1)that it was so long it took up most of my space in my workshop & I spent a lot of time moving my machines about to machine the components
2) I was too fixated with making it out of my English air dried oak which I found, a bit late in the process, was not long enough nor always wide enough ..nor thick enough.
3) The resin took an age to cure ..

Can you tell what I had to do ?

Be nice ..

Yeah, I know it won't win awards.

So here's her undercarriage.. 2 cross support using sliding dovetails

& while the resin was curing in the gallery outside my unit.. It was only finished by the kindness of others letting me use some other spaces in the building.

 

[Jacob]

Looks good!
What was the slow drying resin? Glue? I'd have used PVA.

 

[Togalosh]

Thanks Jacob,

It was 2 part super-clear casting or lay-up resin. I cannot remember exactly but it takes something like 24hrs to cure at 18C & it was cold, my workshop is in a old,cold factory with no south facing windows & the knots took 4 lots of filling because it just kept on sinking into the fissures ..

Can you see my cheats ?

 

[Noel]

Agree with lime wax but still looks good and I like the fact you didn't try and hide the knot.
How many hours do you reckon?

 

[Togalosh]

Agree with lime wax but still looks good and I like the fact you didn't try and hide the knot.
How many hours do you reckon?

..that was going to be my question to you all.

.. 100 of my own.. yes, really.. I cannot remember if that includes delivery to Winchester (from Brum).

To say the days flew by in a few blinks of an eye would be about right.

In my defence, working on a 2.8 m top in a 3.4m x 5m workshop which is full of kit with boards that were undersize in every dimension - in parts- was very challenging. For example ( & to admit my ridiculous manner of my working) I had to router slots (?) into the end grain of the then very uneven top (which was laying flat on my bench ) so I could fit loose tongue tenons with which to joint the oversized bread boards to.. all because the top was too short to tenon the ends as normal. There was only 300mm between the table end & another work table for me to work in to do this. That took the best part of a day.. but the boards fitted nicely & the slots were dead straight.

Anyway, I estimated it would take 1/2 of that time. After all, it's only a larger version of a school project - right ?.