My First Hardwood Project - Small Table

[Tim_UK]

I had a go this week at making a small table, this was my first attempt with hardwood using some sawn planks of oaks I bought a few weeks back.

I ran the planks through my planer thicknesser and then joined 3 together with dowels to form the table top. It didn't look to good as a plain rectangular so I curved two of the edges on my small bandsaw with a homemade circle jig.

I made some simple sides and some battens to form a lower shelf with tenons on my aldi router table.

I then sanded nice and smooth and finished with some wax I had, the wax was called antique pine and ended up a bit darker than I'd hoped for but it's ok.

It was then a case of glueing together:

And most important of all it's finished for my wife's birthday before she's home tonight:

 

[bigjoe]

I like that a lot Tim, and hope your good lady likes/liked it

Joe

 

[OPJ]

Very nice, Tim. Sounds like it didn't take you long, either.

 

[CroppyBoy1798]

Looks like a nice job! That oak looks the business too, nice figuring in it!

How did you attach the top to the two sides? Can we see a pic of the table complete.

 

[Tim_UK]

this is the finished table:

The tabletop is simply attached by 4 dowels, I know this isn't the best way as I've no allowance for any shrinkage/expansion in the wood, but it was my only real choice with the time allowed. I only applied the tiniest amount of glue to the dowels as I was thinking at the time I may want to come up with a better method. Do you think I will have problems with this, the oak was sold as kiln dried and I left it for a few weeks in garage.

 

[Setch]

You should be fine - the legs and top are both oriented with the grain in the same direction, The place you have to watch for movement is when gluing cross grain, or dissimilar timbers.