Maple Dining Room Table - Top, Chamfers, Crosscuts

After noticing one of my wider top panels had cupped, I made another trip to the lumber yard. When I returned, I noticed my newly purchased board came from the same tree as a previous board I had. Cool! I called Brek and asked his opinion on book matching within a table top. He didn't like the idea of two book-matched boards next to a third; said the balance would be off. He suggested ripping the third board and bordering two center book-matched boards. That's what I ended up doing. I think I will appreciate the table so much more if I can always see the book-match and remind myself of my happy accident.

After firming up the table top boards and sides it was time to run them through the jointer. I carefully marked the edges to run each matched edge through the jointer the opposite way. This little trick will ensure matching joints, even if my jointer fence is not perfectly square.

Chamfers - I knew I needed them on this table. People will be moving around chairs and dishes and feet and knees and hands. There would need to be no sharp edges anywhere. So I angled the jointer fence at 45% and ran each edge through twice. I used three passes for each table leg edge to make the chamfers a tad deeper. Deeper leg chamfers will also hopefully deter pets from thinking they can chew a chunk off.

Finally, I screwed my trusty Nobex to the workbench and crosscut the legs and aprons. The Nobex is way more accurate than the table saw. It did suck, making all the cuts in 95 degree Georgia humidy, however.

Maple Dining Room Table - Ripping and Jointing

The first cuts are the hardest. After the first cuts, you are committed to using the sections of lumber you picked out. I spent several hours examining all my wood before finally making the decisions. I got all the ripping out of the way. I hate ripping.

I found some inexpensive pieces of 3" X 3" hard maple that I decided to use for the legs. Cutting them down to 2" X 2" pieces was a major pain. The Shopsmith couldn't handle it in a single pass so I had to use multiple passes, flipping the pieces over. The saw marks were nasty but the jointer I got for the Shopsmith 2 years ago easily cleaned them up. The before and after picture above shows the jointed version on the left.

Maple Dining Room Table - The Wood

The table will go into a dark room. The room's walls are made of old heart pine tongue and groove panels, so we didn't want a dark table. I really wanted birch, because I had just fallen in love with a birch salad bowl I turned recently. However, my lumber yard's birch selection didn't include anything thick enough for the table legs.

Soft maple was our next choice. This is my first time using soft maple. I've heard great things about it and love the pieces my brother has made from soft maple. The actual lumber selection was a nightmare, per my expectations. There are hundreds of decisions. In the end, I stayed fairly conservative, selecting uniform colored pieces with an emphasis on straight grain near the edges.

Melissa talked me out of most of the wild pieces we saw. I managed to end up with this one though...

I was going to use it for the breadboard ends or a panel on the top but I chickened out. There was a knot right in the middle that went through and I got worried it would look too wild.

Maple Dining Room Table - The Design

I've been wanting to build a dining room table for the last several years. We finally decided Greta, the nervous furniture chewing dog, had outgrown the chewing furniture stage. I used Google Sketchup to design the table to scale so I could plan out the construction and make a cut list.

The design is simple and modest. The only curve is that of the long aprons. The curve provides a bit of leg room without compromising the integrity of the apron. I'll use breadboard ends modeled after my brother's technique; where the breadboards are attached to the aprons below them (at their centers) and the joined table-top panels can float freely between the breadboards.

The table will comfortably seat four (two on each long side), with the option to expand to 8 (3 on each long side and one at each short side).