First, I want to start out saying I'm honored to have my table in this space. This is in the basement of my friends home. The house is absolutely beautiful and the newly finished basement is no exception. He contacted me about building this table a while ago and we did the typical back and forth on the design. Because it's in the basement, being able to take it apart was a top priority but the 1-3/8" thick 42"x8' tabletop weighs around 130 pounds. This meant that the base had to be very rigid to prevent racking. The legs have mortises that receive loose tenons from the skirt and then bolts go through diagonal supports and pull it all together. It's a fairly common design and it worked out well here. The breadboards add an extra bit of flair to the ends and make it look more polished and refined. I love how this turned out and I don't think it could fit the space any better. It's easy to imagine it surrounded by friends and family during a game or holiday.
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It's been about 5 years since I posted my last project. I've built a few small things since 2018 but I spent most of that time focusing on other parts of my life.
A few months ago a friend asked me to build a table for their new basement (I'll post that after it is delivered). It was a large project and it got me back in the shop. After that I felt the urge to build a few new pieces for our living room. We got new couches a few years ago and we really enjoy them, but we were missing having coffee table to put snacks and drinks on during football games. I had seen a few different ottoman table designs and thought it would be a good option to add a surface but be able to move it out of the way easily when not in use. The build is fairly simple, a fairly straightforward panel glue-up made up of a bunch of random length strips. The end grain joints were a bit challenging but everything came together quite well. I really like how the grain flows over the corners. The corners are reinforced with a few biscuits and despite the dainty look, the miters are very strong and the table has no problem supporting the weight of a person. Going forward I plan to build things on a more regular schedule again and take on projects that look interesting to me. I don't think I'll be documenting build the process anymore so I can focus more on enjoying the time in the shop. Some of our good friends asked me to build a table for them. They liked the table I had built for our kitchen but wanted something that could accommodate a larger family and could be extended when even more people were present. I came up with a design for an extending walnut trestle table and sent them a few screenshots. We agreed on the design and I headed for the lumber yard. Back in June, I received an email from Brenna. She explained that she was a friend of Cameron and Emma and had seen the table I had made for them. She was interested in a bookshelf and had a couple examples of the styles she liked. I whipped up a concept in Sketchup and sent over a few pictures. After a few slight modifications we agreed on a design and it was time to go to work. The construction is fairly simple. Four panels make up the case and three more are used for the divider and shelves. Starting with the rough wood, I planed, jointed and then biscuit joined the boards into the panels. The trusty #4 made quick work of the panels and evened out any discrepancies from the glue-up. I've been wanting to do a dovetailed case for a while and this was the perfect piece to do it on. The contrast of the endgrain on cherry really stands out against the milder edge grain on the corners. The simplicity of the rest of the piece helps draw you eyes to the corners and appreciate what went into them. I've really started to enjoy doing handcut dovetails. The process is always the same. Tails first removing just a little triangle - over and over again. It's actually therapeutic, it's become automatic enough to not require constant overthinking but still remains technically challenging. This case has 4 feet of dovetails. I should really be keeping a tally somewhere of my lifetime total. The pins are cut by first tracing the mating tails, sawing down the lines, removing the bulk of the material with a coping saw and then chiseling away the remaining material. After a few test fits and minor tweaks the boards slide together with just the right amount of effort. The shelf and center support both sit in stopped dadoes in the frame. I built a jig for the router that can accurately cut dadoes at any width so the boards fit just right in the groove. The dado stops short of the front of the case so from the front the shelf and center look like simple butt joints but they have the strength of being dadoed in. Once the case pieces were done it was time to glue it up. Getting four dovetailed corners assembled before the glue starts to dry is definitely a challenge. Once the glue was dry I test fit the shelf and divider as well. After the case was done, it was time to move on to the base. The feet started as a cutoff end from an 8/4 slab leftover from the chest of drawers project. It took a couple tries to get the angle right but once I settled on the look it was quick to batch out four feet. The rest of the base went together quick as well. Simple mortise and tenon joints hold it all together. Finishing touches - I sprayed two coats of dewaxed shellac to make the grain contrast pop and followed that up with two coats of waterborne poly for a protective top coat. The base is held to the case with tabletop fasteners to account for the small amount of wood movement the 12" wide panel might experience. I love how this bookshelf turned out. It is so simple it really puts emphasis on the small design elements that brings the piece together.
Thanks again Brenna for working with me on this awesome project! A couple months ago a good friend of mine sent me a link to a website of something he wanted me to build. The concept was fairly straight forward. Make a table with a 3’ x 5’ playing surface for playing board games with a cover that serve as a dining room table. It also has a removable insert that adds a raised area for snacks and books and things. I went to work in Sketchup to come up with a design that would fit all of the specs they were looking for and after a few times back and forth we settled on a design. Much of the design is governed by standards in the furniture industry. Tables should be about 30” tall at the eating surface and should provide 8” of clearance from the bench to the apron of the table. One of the theme’s I tried to keep in mind when building this was comfort. Some longer games can last an entire night. With this in mind I profiled all of the edges with large radii and rounded all of the corners. Projects like start by milling the lumber and glueing up the legs. The legs are made up of two pieces of 8/4 lumber and the rest of the table is made from 4/4 stock. The aprons connect to the legs with mortise and tenon joints. I left a lot of material at the top of the leg to ensure the integrity of the top of the leg was maintained. This was especially important for this design because I later chamfered the inside corners for the game table top. The edges of the legs were rounded off on the router table and 45 degree angles were cut on the ends of the apron tenons so they wouldn’t touch each other in the mortises. Before glueing, chamfers were cut on the inside corners of the legs. This will give the playing surface a more continuous look in the corners. Cross supports were glued in with biscuits to support the surface. Next, it was time to start working on the top rail. This was made with mitered corner and biscuits hold the miters together. The whole top rail was glued up loose and installed to the base after it was assembled. This ensured tight miters. The whole top rail extends over the inside edge by about a 1/4". This was later trimmed with a flush trim bit to fit the apron perfectly. The Corners were rounded with a pattern I cut out of plywood and a pattern bit in the router. Since this cuts directly on the tip of the miters and grain goes both directions, care was taken to take small nibbles to prevent tearout. The top is secured to the base with glue and screws. Each corner gets screwed directly to the leg. Carefully selected grain matched plugs cover the holes. These are barely noticeable in the finished project. The top is made up of a sheet of oak veneer plywood and wrapped with 2-1/2” of solid oak trim. This is the only way a trim can wrap all the way around tabletop. If solid wood was used, wood movement would eventually tear the trim away from the ends of the tabletop. I wanted to keep the same rounded theme of the base which meant making a few more templates to round the corners and make corner blocks that follow the edges. I worked this out on some practice pieces before I started this project and thought this would be a cool place to use this technique. Assembling this all together was a very tedious process. Since everything had to fit perfectly each of the eight pieces was glued in one at a time. Every couple hours the glue was dry enough to put the next piece in. They are held on with biscuits and plenty of glue. A 2-3/4” hole saw was used to drill holes for stainless steel cup holders. These fit a bottle or can perfectly and when removed a pint glass fits perfectly in the hole. The clamps are holding a backer board in place to prevent tearout on the backside of the holes. For finish, I used General Finishes Java Gel Stain followed by several coats of General Finishes Polyurethane. Another great project in the books. A big thank you goes out to Cam and Emma for wanting to do this project. I hope this table serves your family for years to come.
As always thanks for viewing and if you have questions on how or why I did something please don't hesitate to ask. It's been a while. One of the many things I am not very good at is doing things in moderation. I've struggled with this for a long time. My last build was in July. I've done a few small projects since then but nothing that took more than a day or two to complete. I spent that time off of training for and finishing my first (and probably last) marathon. With winter in full force and running pushed to the back burner once again, it's time to get back in the shop. Our daughter is getting older. We had a mattress laying on the floor some time as she outgrew her crib a while ago but having a full height bed seemed a bit more adventurous than we cared to be. I thought now might be a good time for a "Big girl bed". The legs are made up of 3 pieces of 3/4"x2.5" glued together. I would have loved solid posts but 12/4 cherry is fairly hard to come by and quite expensive. Once again I used every single small clamp I own. Next I selected the material for the headboard and footboards. The headboard had a really awesome grain in a sweeping arch that matched the shape I wanted to use. I matched that arch with a ruler, roughed it out on the bandsaw and cleaned it up with my latest Craigslist find - a 6" horizontal belt sander. To make the tenons easier, I cut them before doing any of the shaping. The headboard was used as a template for the footboard and it was cut out in the same way. Tenons are added to the other cross pieces for the headboard and footboard. Layout for the headboard was mostly done by eye and mortises are cut in the legs on the mortiser. It's starting to look like a bed frame! The rails are made a 1x6 and a 1x1 glued to the bottom. Here are all of the small clamps once again. A super sharp hand plane is much faster at cleaning up wood than sanding and can actually leave a cleaner surface. I still went over it with some 220 grit before putting the poly on but it made sanding go a lot quicker. Sanding before glueing also made sanding a little more tolerable. For finish, I went with Semi-gloss Poly from General Finishes. I say it every time. This is my go to poly finish.
Here it is finished. Except it's not. I hate how it looks. The headboard is way too tall. Back to the shop for some modifications.
I fixed it by cutting 9" off the legs of the headboard and adding a second set of hardware. This allows the bed to be used in a "toddler position only a few inches off the floor and then moved up when the child is older. Before I get a bunch of people asking, this isn't our way of announcing we're having another kid. Our daughter loves sitting in the different chairs in our house. She loves to sit in the maple Maloof chair I made a year ago the best. We thought it was time she had her own table and chairs. The style is sort of a mish-mash of Maloof and Modern with details taken from each and applied in my own sort of way. The table compliments the chairs but each could certainly stand on their own. Like all projects, this started as a pile of boards. I started on the chairs first with some simple angled bridal joints. This forms the main upright and the foot of the chairs. I knew I would be removing a significant portion of the legs with shaping, but wanted to have plenty to work with. I got started on the seats right away as well. They are just 4 boards of random width edge glued together. A 10 degree angle is cut on the sides to provide the seat shape. I left them flat rather than shaping them to the traditional Maloof style. The legs get a rabbit cut at the seat level and the seat gets a matching one to accept each leg. This provides a strong joint that can easily hold an adult. The leg shape was sketched out, rough cut on the band saw and finished with a spoke shave and sanders. I made a custom sanding stick to get into the tight radius corners (sandpaper taped to a piece of pipe). Once the first was done, I could copy the shape to the other legs and do the same to those. Once all the legs were shaped and sanded out I could do a test fit and drill the holes for the screws. Not shown is the 10-15 attempts to get the angles right for the back rest. The compound angles the legs formed made this quite challenging. This is borrowed completely from Sam Maloof. Screws and glue are used to hold the chairs together and the holes are plugged with a contrasting color wood - in this case walnut. After the chairs were done the table was next. It took a long time to decide on the boards for the tabletop. This was a leftover from the dresser build I did. I like how the maple heartwood darts in from each side. One of the trickier cuts was adding a bevel to the underside of the table. This meant standing the whole top on end while cutting on the table saw. The table legs follow the same design as our walnut trestle style dining table. Mortise and tenon joints hold the vertical supports to the top and bottom supports. Each of those gets gentle angles cut on the table saw and the vertical supports get a through mortise that will accept the horizontal brace that ties it all together. More cutting and sanding. The horizontal support is fitted and gets through mortises for wedges to hold it in place. These are some decorative pegs that tie the chair style to the table. They might add a small amount of strength to the mortise and tenon joints but they are mainly meant to be decorative. The bottom of the table gets threaded brass inserts that will be used to attach the legs. The holes in the legs are oversized to allow for movement of the solid wood top. Four wedges were cut from ipe to hold the horizontal support in place. The table and chairs were finished with my home made mixture of Linseed oil and Beeswax. This should be a durable enough finish for a kids table but also a repairable finish if that were ever needed. This went together really well and turned out about as well as I could have hoped. I think Jane will enjoy it for years to come. As always, thanks for checking it out!
This is a project I have been meaning to do for a while. You see, theres a rule in woodworking for how long wood is supposed to dry before you use it. The rule states that for every inch of thickness, the wood should dry for about one year. Let's go back a little. Back in February of 2016 my dad and I milled a few white pine logs. At that time I had only done a few woodworking projects. A table, a bed frame and a few odds and ends. I had no way of knowing that one of those slabs might be hanging above my shop door a year and a half later. Luckily at 2" thick I had some time to about it. A fine specimen. I'm not sure if it was one I helped saw or if this one was done earlier, but it's definitely dry. I picked this one for its slight arching curve. It wouldn't make a great bench or tabletop, but it will be one heck of a sign. I wanted the lettering to follow the natural curve of the slab so I used a yard stick to trace out a line to follow. I also sketched out letters by hand to see what sort of height and spacing I would be able to use. Mistakes were made. A new set of paper for this sander costs about $10 and lasts less than one pass with the pitchy white pine. I guess you really can buy an education. I finished the rest of the sanding with a belt sander. And then more mistakes... It took a few tries to get the letters to have the right size and spacing. You can see a few of the attempts littering the floor. Cutting out letters is fairly straight forward. I traced the paper letters with a sharp knife and then darkened the lines with pencil and marked the area to be cut out. Then with a 1/4" end mill bit in the router removed everything that wasn't a proper shop sign. Cleanup was done with a chisel and sharp knife. Every line was gone over again to remove any wiggles I had with the router. Finishing this was done in many steps. First the entire slab front and back was coated with shellac to seal all of the grain. This will protect the wood from paint bleeding into places I don't want it to be. Next, the letters were primed with two coats of a shellac based primer and followed with two coats of black outdoor paint. I was fairly sloppy with the paint because I knew I would be sanding off any that was on the raised surface to clean the front face. After another coat of shellac, the entire sign got two coats of polyurethane. Dewaxed shellac is what's known as a universal go-betweener. It can adhere to almost any other finish so it is a great in-between coat if you need to work with different types of finish. Done and hung. This isn't where it will actually go, but I love the sharp contrast of the white pine on the dark red background. Eventually it will go inside the barn above the door to the shop.
Last fall I helped a friend (we'll call him Russ) butcher a pig (we'll call her Ruth). I'm no stranger to raising my own food and my dad taught me to process deer well before I could legally drive a car but this was my first pig. The local farm was very accommodating and had quite a few amenities for us to use while worked. We staged our things on the back of the truck and used a picnic table to hold some cleaning supplies, spare sharp knives, a bowl and some small cutting boards. I had been doing quite a bit of woodworking and Russ came up with idea of building a very large butcher block to aid in future outings and possibly take up north for hunting season. We talked a little about what it would take to build such a thing. Not long after that cool fall morning, I ate what was probably the best bacon I've ever had. The bacon was accompanied by few texts and a phone call about some of the details for a butcher block. The idea was simple - Glue 2"x1" strips of wood together, alternating between cherry and maple until there was a solid chunk of wood 6'x3' and 2" thick. This was a brilliant idea, but no one did any math on it. At 45 pounds per cubic foot, this could weigh up to 135 pounds. There's nothing special about the top except for how large and heavy it is. I couldn't be happier about how it turned out. I had just found a large drum sander on craigslist for a very reasonable price and I was itching to try it out. This was the perfect project. The top was built in two halves to fit through the two foot wide sander. After it was sanded flat I glued the halves together. Just about the time I had the butcher block done I talked to Russ and he had decided he wanted a base to put it on. I sent him a sketch of what I had in mind, and within a couple days I was back in the shop. The base was 3 main parts, two sides and a board to go between them to stabilize the table. The table barrows some style from a Japanese Trestle table and the simple views of the Shakers. The design was born from the idea that Russ could be traveling with it. The entire table will fold down to less than 5" tall and can be assembled in a few minutes and with a few wedges and 4 bolts to hold the top on. The base was made from maple and constructed with standard mortise and tenon joinery. The lower stretcher on each side has a hole for the board to join the two ends together. Sometimes I use really fancy custom tools like this stick with sandpaper on it. To hold the top on I drilled 3 holes into each side. The outer holes are slotted to account for wood movement. The center stretcher was roughed out on the mortiser and then finished with another custom sanding stick. Time for some more glue followed by a test fit. Once I test fit everything I noticed something. The top is very heavy. So much so that the base was slightly wobbly no matter how tight I made the wedges. It was obvious it needed some sort of diagonal support. I came up with a simple cable support that really solidified the entire table. Once tightened there is almost no movement. Finish is probably the most difficult part of any project. It's almost done but the finish can make or break the final product. I use several different types of finishes depending on the end use. Since this will get used for food it's imperative the finish is food safe, durable, washable and easy to reapply. I ended up mixing my own finish for this project. The top was finished with special blend of butcher block oil mixed with beeswax to add durability. The base was finished with boiled linseed oil and beeswax for a slightly darker finish that made the grain pop. I had a few scraps left over so I built a couple small cutting boards for Russ as well. Maybe he'll cut on these for the first couple times he uses the table. All assembled, I'd bet the whole table weighs in at about 200 lbs. It was another fun project. I can't wait to see it in use.
One of my college friends (we'll call him Bob) sent me a text a couple months ago about a little project. He was getting ready to move into a new house he designed and wanted a custom bench for the foyer that matched the style of the some of the other pieces in the new house. Bob is the perfect customer, he understands construction, the design process, timelines and works with people very well. He sent me a Sketchup file of what he wanted but went along with almost all the suggestions I had for him. His requirements were few, but specific - a perfect mix of design direction and creative freedom. Normally, I would start by glueing up the bench seat or table top first. This time I had an exact plan on what I was building and didn't have the top material so I actually started on the legs and skirt first. The top is normally built first so small adjustments can be made if the dimensions don't come out exactly how you planned. Every project has a requirement of using all of the clamps at least once. Glueing up the legs is a sure way of doing this. The side panels are constructed with traditional rails and stiles. The center panel is 1/2" plywood. All the base material is maple. I love the workability of maple. It's very hard, but each the cuts are predictable and it's always well behaved. Details make woodworking projects fun and interesting. These are the two skirt pieces. A simple arch on these take the bench from chunky and boxy to slim and interesting. The side panels slide into dados cut in the legs and the skirts are joined with mortise and tenon joints. The base is mostly compete at this stage. Breaking down big slabs can be challenging. This one was 2" thick, 11-13" wide and almost 9' long. It came from a local sawer down by me. I used biscuits to line up the boards for the glue-up. Normally I would just do one board at a time, but this certainly made it go much faster. The top got five coats of Arm-R-Seal semigloss poly and the base got two coats of primer and two coats of Sherwin Williams Pure White Satin. Tabletop buttons hold the the two together and allow for wood movement. It's always fun working on new projects. This one took me out of my element a little bit with the painted finish but I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I hope Bob is too.
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Aaron Whalen:A blog about woodworking in Southwest Wisconsin Previous ProjectsArchives
February 2024
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