Amateur Woodworkers

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The Final Table Mistake and the Final Table

So I made one more mistake on my table that made the saturday table project feel more like an April table. If you recall I had to make six legs instead of the necessary two because I screwed the first two up.

I recently made another mistake that I'm finding is easy to make: with the end in sight, I rushed a little too much. I had milled the lumber for the table top and glued it up weeks ago, but hadn't sawn it to size. It was the last thing I needed to do and I cut the long dimension down to the short dimension size. I tried to compensate by make the short length of the top equally undersized, but it just didn't look right sitting on top of the apron and legs. So I had to go back and find some more lumber, mill it, glue it and then CAREFULLY cut it to size. Here is the end result:



Overall I am pretty happy with it. Two fo the legs are a little fatter than the others. Since the lumber is so crappy I will need to paint it.

With this project out of the way, we have almost turned our total attention back to the beds (Maverick is constantly sneaking over to his wood lathe).

Maverick and His Lathe

Maverick has taken the opportunity to make bowls on the wood lathe he built. Since I have no role in this side project I will let the pictures speak for themselves. (Maybe now he'll get off my back about posting these).





The first attempt (oak):



The second attempt (maple):

Monday, April 03, 2006

Learning from Mistakes

After I glued-up the first 4 legs and shaped the first two on the band saw (using Maverick's jig) I realized I had made a mistake.





I had to scrap my first two legs because I started the four main tapers to close to the top of the leg. This was a problem when I ran them across the jointer to make them smooth. Since they were so high the jointer actually cut into the top of the leg which needed to be perfectly flat to connect to the table's apron. It would have been impossible to get a solid connection between apron and leg. For the next two legs I started the taper a few inches lower and didn't have the same problem. Last Thursday I glued some more leg stock and will try to finish shaping the last two legs tomorrow.

I did manage to cut the mortises in the two good legs on Thursday with Maverick's handy mortise cutter. It's very easy to use. Maverick recommended that I make the first two cuts in the opposite ends of the mortise and then work from left to right.