No longer remotely Shaker(ish) dining table

[custard]

Hello Steve, going back to the point about furniture strength, I'm frequently surprised at just how strong even quite spindly looking pieces can be, just think about chairs carrying hefty blokes for year after year.

This is a Shaker piece that I make fairly regularly,

When I first made it I joked to prospective clients that it was not suitable for households "with small boys or big dogs". To be honest I was sceptical the legs would survive first contact with a vacuum cleaner. But I must have sold fifteen or twenty of them by now, and this first mock up has been in my house for about five years. Touch wood I haven't had any breakages so far!

 

[Steve Maskery]

That is very elegant, custard, very nice indeed.
What I'm doing now is just to tide me over. I've been without a proper dining table for 9 years and am fed up of my dining room looking like a timber yard. So having got the top sorted, I just want a quick and dirty undercarriage until I can get just the right board for the columns.

 

[Setch]

I implore you Steve, never use the phrase "quick and dirty uncarriage" again.

 

[Doug B]

I implore you Steve, never use the phrase "quick and dirty uncarriage" again.

What’s wrong with a quick & dirty undercarriage? Some of us are grateful for what ever we can get

 

[Farm Labourer]

Hello Steve, going back to the point about furniture strength, I'm frequently surprised at just how strong even quite spindly looking pieces can be, just think about chairs carrying hefty blokes for year after year.

This is a Shaker piece that I make fairly regularly,

View attachment 91618

Custard, I'd love to see a photo taken from beneath. It looks uber-elegant.

 

[custard]

Custard, I'd love to see a photo taken from beneath. It looks uber-elegant.

Rather than create a digression on Steve's post, I'll start a new thread!

 

[Farm Labourer]

Thank you, that's very helpful! I certainly wasn't trying to hijack Steve's thread

 

[Steve Maskery]

This how I made the tapered legs:

 

[Steve Maskery]

I cut the tenon cheeks a few weeks ago and appear to have forgotten to take any photos. I might be able to fake one tomorrow. But here is a pic of the Ultimate Tablesaw Tenon Jig (TM) from an earlier project

It's quick to set up, fast to operate and gives results that are Right First Time Every Time.

I've been spending more time than I should making a Poor Man's Sliding Table. Well the fence isn't Finished finished (I'm waiting for a flip-stop to arrive before I cut the vertical part of the fence), but it is Useable finished, so I cut the tenon shoulders today.

Then over to the bandsaw to trim the width

Back on the TS fitted with the PMST and the blade tilted to 45deg, I mitred the ends of the tenons so that they will not foul each other inside the mortice cavity.

Then it was cleaning up the arrises and some sanding

These are the two components

So the burning question is, "Do they fit?"

Course they do! I can push them together (just) by hand, but they need a light tap with a mallet to get apart. Just what I want. And I promise you that that is straight off the saw. No, I mean ZERO, fettling.

So it was time to glue up the two end pairs and check for square and wind.

Tomorrow I'll do the same with the long rails.

 

[Steve Maskery]

It's rarely a good idea to change the design mid-build, but that's exactly what I have done here...

I had a bit of a tidy-up in the workshop and found the offcuts from the original pippy-oak table. There was enough to make two 250mm extension leaves, which would enable me to have the table at 2m long if I had to. Now I don't anticipate that will be necessary very often, the days of dinner parties for 8 or 10 (12 once) are long gone and are not coming back, but a 5ft table is quite modest. Perfect for my every-day needs, but, who knows, eh?

I have made dining tables in the past with fancy folding leaf mechanisms; drop-leaf, butterfly and swivel-fold, but they are all rather complex, and, for this at least, unnecessary. I'm going to have two plain leaves on forks that slot into the ends of the table. They will be stored underneath when not needed.

So I made two pairs of forks that will fold together nicely:

and cut notches in my end aprons, which would have been so much easier if I had thought of this before I glued up the end assemblies:

until the forks fitted nicely

Then I made a pair of bearers on which the leaves will sit, underneath the table, but I seem to be having some camera trouble, a whole series of pictures have come out blurred. It's either senility creeping in, or it means my camera is on the blink. Either way

So the first stage of the glue-up is done, the bearers just biscuited into the long rails, and my Square of Thales tells me that everything is spot-on square (although I did need a bit of diagonal bracing to ensure it was right).

Tomorrow I shall attach the end frames and make some buttons.

 

[Max Power]

Coming along nicely Steve and very entertaining reading

 

[Steve Maskery]

I actually went back into the workshop last night and attached the ends, so this morning I took the clamps off and it looked like this:

You can see how the leaves are going to sit underneath.

Today's main task was to make the buttons. There are two approaches to this: starting with a short wide board or starting with long off-rips.

If you have a short board end, this is a good use for it. Just rout a rebate along the end-grain edge to create a tongue, then chop it up into individual buttons.

But in my workshop, I'm much more likely to have long narrow off-rips, so I'm adopting a different approach. Tou won't be the slightest bit surprised to learn that I have a jig for this job...

I first published this many years ago when I was filming my first Workshop Essentials series. It's on Volume 5 if you are interested. This is still the very same jig from that time, although it is getting a bit tatty now.

It consists of a baseboard with a slightly shorter sub-base on it, and a fence-cum-handle with a slightly shorter and quite thin (5mm or so) sub-fence on that.

There is only one set-up, and that is the distance of the bandsaw fence from the blade. Get that right and all the other dimensions drop into place.

The stock needs to be the right thicknes - a tad less than the distance from the bottom of the apron groove to the top of the apron. I removed all the long-grain arrises before I started, as it is easier than doing each one separately afterwards.

So the first cut is a rip cut to create the length of the tongue.

Then the workpiece is held aginst the sub-base to cut off the waste leaving me with a tongue.

Then the workpiece is held down on the table and the jig pushes it worwards and clear of the blade

Normally I wouldn't dream of using the rip fence as a cross-cut length gauge, but here the lettle bit is properly supported all through the cut and ends up well clear of the blade.

Which produces this:

A bit of a clean up on the disk sander

And like Cinderella's slipper it fits

They just need a countersunk hole how and they are finished.

But time was marching on and I wanted to get a coat of primer on the base before I left. It was only when I was uploading this photo that I realised I'd missed a bit.

Ho hum.

 

[TheTiddles]

How are you going to stop the stored leaves from fading less than the rest of the top? Seems to be a common problem on tables of this type (unless you cover the top which removes the point of having a nice top in my opinion )

Aidan

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi Aidan. I can't say that I've given that any thought. Perhaps I'll just never open the curtains and live in the dark.

S

 

[Steve Maskery]

You can see the Button Jig in action here:

 

[Steve Maskery]

I gave the base a coat of primer

and then several coats of eggshell. It's not easy getting a flawless finish and mine most certainly isn't. but the bits that are seen are OK. Not great, but OK. I'd need to hire Doctor Bob's painters to get what I'd actually like.

There was enough wood left over to make a couple of leaves. They just plug into the ends. When not in use they arms fold away and they will store underneath. (Allegedly, as you'll see in a moment...)

Those supporting rails have been lined with baize to stop the leaves from getting scratched. I used spray adhesive and trimmed the baize after application

There are ten buttons holding down the top

With the leaves installed, I added couple of nice brass table forks

And that's when I hit a snag. The arms of the leaves fold away, but they are longer than the distance between them. So one can turn 90 degrees, but the other has to turn 270. But with the brass fork socket in the way... Oops.

It's easy enough to fix, I just need to shorten on of the arms by a couple of inches, so it can fold inwards rather than outwards. Embarrassing, though.

The top is finished with a coat of Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO) and then Osmo. I wish my finishing was as good as my joinery. The finish is OK, but, TBH, it's a bit patchy in places. I think I'll just have to keep waxing it, hoping it will even out.

So this is what it looks like now.

It's bigger in the room than it looked in the workshop! And with the leaves attached it is too big.

TBH, I can't ever see me using it like that. It would seat 6 very comfortably and I could probably squeeze 8 round it. I don't have that many friends any more. I have two friends who come over, Sheila, who doesn't eat meat, and Charlie, who doesn't eat anything he hasn't cooked himself. The days of big dinner parties are over.

So. I've not given up on the orginal Shaker-double-tripod variation entirely, despite Mike's protestations, but this is growing on me, so it may just be temporary until I die.

 

[custard]

Very tidy job.

All furniture that you've made yourself is special, but a dining table is that little bit extra special. To break bread with friends or family at a table that you've crafted yourself, well it brings an extra dimension to any meal.

 

[Steliz]

The top looks lovely but I'm not keen on the green paint.

 

[Felix]

Proper job.....nice

 

[Steve Maskery]

The top looks lovely but I'm not keen on the green paint.

I was inspired by Doctor Bob:

When I put the first coat on, I thought to myself, "Steve, what on earth have you done?" But now, 6 or 8 coats later, I've lost count, it's beginning to grow on me. And in the dining room, in the shade of the top, it looks darker and much less green anyway. I really rather like it.