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).

We Refinished Our Floors...Twice!

Our southeast-facing front bay window takes in a lot of direct sunlight. It also gets a lot of abuse from dogs looking out that window to monitor the front yard. About a year ago we noticed the finish was beginning to wear itself off the floor in areas. We also had another room, the study, that had worn patches of finish from the time we bought the house. We hoped Minwax Reviver would be enough but after a couple applications, we decided we would take the plunge and try our hands at refinishing.

We did a bunch of research. My favorite video was this one. We waited for spring because we knew we would have to have windows open because of the fumes and to aid with drying. We picked a weekend, emptied both rooms, I rented an orbital floor sander, and we spent an entire Saturday sanding down both rooms. We used my orbital palm sander for the detailed areas and my 1/4-sheet palm sander for the corners. The reason I rented the orbital floor sander instead of the drum sander was because I wanted to remove as little wood as possible. This is a 1930's house and its floors have already been refinished multiple times. I could tell by removing the HVAC registers.

The next day we vacuumed, wiped the walls down, wiped the floors down with mineral spirits, and began applying the finish. We selected an oil based, clear satin, super fast-drying polyurethane finish for floors. Clear satin to hide any future imperfections.

Shortly after applying the first coat, our air conditioning decided to kick in. Ahhhhh! We both forgot about it. It had been on for weeks but not warm enough to actually turn on...until today of course. It wasn't the air conditioning itself that got us. It was months worth of pet hair that had fallen into the vents, now blowing all over our wet finish.

And with that simple little problem, we had to start over. The hair was everywhere and the only way to remove it was to wait several days, then sand it down again.

I had to go out of town for work so Melissa ended up taking a Friday off work and sanding down both rooms with our orbital palm sander! I don't know how she managed but when I got home Friday night, both rooms were ready to go.

So after turning off the air conditioning, we spent Saturday reapplying three coats of finish and declared it a success. That may be the last time we ever refinish floors.

Learning To Turn Better Bowls

Apparently, making bowls was more than a brief experiment for me. I've been squeezing in lots of time, this summer, practicing with new wood and refining my techniques.

Here is a Red Gum salad bowl I made for Melissa.


Walnut...


I got lucky and found an abnormally large Rose of Sharon log being thrown away.

I used it to make one of my favorite little bowls (below). I turned it green and it has really warped since. I don't mind. I love watching it dry and change shape. The wood is pure white and like plastic after polishing.

Another curb-side find was a Sweet Gum log yielding this...


My Aunt Kim got this Ambrosia Maple bowl as a gift for letting Melissa and I stay in her lake house.

My Mom and Dad got this pretty little natural edge Dogwood Tree bowl.

This Lightning Struck Poplar bowl has neat ribbon figure...



My friends, Tracey and Jeff, took down a Silver Maple and Sweet Gum tree from their yard and donated several logs to my cause. The Silver Maple turned out to be infected with ambrosia beetles and they helped to make the wood much more interesting, though most was too rotten to use. I was able to get a couple bowls from it. This one has gorgeous figure but I don't like the final shape of the bowl.


I like this bowl shape better. There are four beetle holes on the bottom of this bowl. I decided not to fill them in because I think it's neat to remember the beetles. This bowl will have to be used for something other than liquids.

I think the Sweet Gum was my favorite, though. Here is the bowl I gave Tracey as a gift for the wood.


This one went to Michelle, Melissa's sister. It was a gift because she was the first person to ask for a bowl. I really liked this one. It is a perfect little bowl shape.


I picked up a really neat Crab Apple log from Carlton McLendon's...

Much of it was rotten but I still managed to get four bowls from it.






Including my first enclosed form.


I also messed with a Bradford Pear log and got one of my favorite bowls...

Yesterday, I cut up a rotten Dogwood tree log and manged to get a really neat bowl (below). This bowl is heavier than I usually make. I really like the feel of the sturdiness. And man, that Dogwood is gorgeous wood; reds, dark browns, creamy sap wood, a touch of spalting. This may be my new favorite bowl.

Learning Bowl Turning

At art shows, I always stop at the bowl turners' booths to marvel at their mysterious and beautiful work. I've always wondered how they do it and recently I've taken a plunge into the fabulous world of face plate mounting or end grain turning.

This bowl turning stuff has really started to appeal to me. Or as Melissa puts it, I'm obsessed. After spending 6 months making my walnut coffee table (seen in previous posts), it's refreshing to know I can finish a bowl the same day I start it. Weird. Sure, it's not woodworking by most definitions, but it is working with wood, right? In fact, turning has brought me much closer to wood and I appreciate its beauty, smell, variety, movement, and texture so much more.

Here is my second bowl...made from an unknown blank I found on the clearance shelf at Highland Hardware. Cherry maybe?



Here's another...Maple. Its got some interesting holes in it, probably bored by some insect.

The shavings...you can't beat the feeling of being covered in all those warm wet shavings that fly all over you.


I'm still wasting tons of time experimenting with different styles of grinds on my tools. I have a crumby 6" grinding wheel with vibration problems. I'm also still learning how to use my tools, which tools to use, and which grind to give them.


In addition, I'm still trying to master all the basic stuff like how to safely hold my work, which speeds to use. And since my lathe is my Shopsmith, I'm also learning on a "stick shift"...nothing is rigid or solid. The Shopsmith walks all over the driveway if anything is slightly off balance. Someday I'll buy a real lathe!


Yesterday I made my first bowl good enough to become my personal salad bowl; Tulip Poplar. I put a rim that allows one to hook their thumb on it and tried the get the dimensions perfect for my nightly salads. We'll see how it does. I'm a little concerned I made it too thin for abuse.


I've always thought natural edge bowls (i.e. the bark is still attached to the edge) were impractical. After making one, I've changed my mind. It's way too cool. It allows one to really enjoy a tree long after it's gone and it still can hold stuff just as well. The most thrilling part is that I was able to turn this Oak log (found on the curb a block from my house after a storm):

into this:

Attaching the Coffee Table Doors

I'm a little behind in my posts. I attempted to attach the six coffee table doors two weeks ago and discovered I hadn't allowed enough room for the swing. The doors would open/close but they would catch on the rail above them. This was bad.


I set up the sanding disc with a coarse grit, tilted the Shopsmith table, and sanded the top back edge of the doors. Some of the doors also needed trimming on the bottom because they were catching the bottom rail. All this set me back a couple weeks because I had to refinish all the doors. The good part is, it gave me a chance to sand down the table top a second time and build the finish coats back up to a smooth glassy surface.


After the rain stopped, Melissa and I brought it in and sat it into its new home, in our family room. The final step will be to add a wax polish to the top. I guess I'll wait a couple weeks to make sure the poly has completely dried.


If my construction was done correctly, this table should withstand the seasonal humidity changes and I'll be able to watch the table top expand and pull away from the breadboard edges.

Magnetic Door Catches

Yes, I'm still putting coats of finish on the coffee table. I have about one more coat for the doors and most of the table. The table top still needs about 5 more coats. I've been sanding down the top after sets of coats, in an effort to fill the pores and defects with finish. It's nearing a flat top but I think I'm nearing boredom with it so I'm going to end far short of perfection.

Meanwhile, I finally put together the magnetic door catches. They may be cheap, but they're also easy to install and durable. I found a piece of scrap walnut already ripped to match the coffee table rails. So I cross cut 6 pieces on the chop saw. Since there isn't room to get a drill under the bottom shelf, I had to drill and attach the magnetic catches using a straight edge as a guide. The catches have some play that alows for fine adjustment. I can adjust with a stub hand screw driver when I attach the door. I plan to mount the magnetic catch blocks behind the second from bottom rail. I'll use glue and a nail gun. Melissa doesn't like the plastic magnetic catches but they'll be hidden. I don't mind them because I know how difficult other catches are to install.

First Coat of Finish

Dust-free environment. The instructions always say dust-free environment. Who the hell has these? Not me, obviously.

So instead, I swept out my garage the day before, let the dust settle, then brought my shop vac into the garage and gave the coffee table a good once over. Finally, I wiped it down with one of those special dust collector cloths.

I flipped through my copy of Bob Flexner's "Understanding Wood Finishing" book to see if Bob could talk me out of my standard, Minwax Wipe-On Poly varnish. He almost convinced me to use a two-part epoxy resin finish for the top surface. But a brief chat with my brother convinced me that the epoxy resin probably blocked moisure exchange completly, which meant unless I could coat all surfaces and joints with the stuff, I would have to be concerned with some warping some day. In the end, I picked Wipe-On Poly.


The first coat was a pain, which scares me about the rest of the coats I'll have to do. However, it was nice to see the warming effect of the varnish. I still have to put my first coat on the six doors.

Sanding Before the Finish

I always think sanding will be a quick task but it never is. I used 60 grit to get rid of saw blade marks and remove remaining sharp edges. Then I hand-sanded the whole thing with 120 grit, and then a third time with 320 grit. I know the 320 is overkill since I plan to use wiping varnish, but I didn't have any paper between 120 and 320 left and I was too lazy to go buy it.



I used blocks of wood to hold the paper for most areas. There are lots of cracks, grooves, and hard to reach places on this table. And once I started using the 320 grit, it revealed all the scratches and blemishes. I tried to back down the grits and polish most of the defects out but after about 6 hours I was sore, bored, and feeling like it was good enough for a weekend warrior, such as myself.

Ebony Plugs Sanded

After cutting the plugs with a flush saw and a little sanding, I've got my decorative, screw hole patches done. ...I'm not sure I like them. Oh well!