Roughing It

A while back we pulled lumber for Ira’s set of Heavy Duty Tray Tables and brought it inside the workshop to acclimate. If you’re interested in a discussion of our lumber and how it is prepared, just Click Here. When you're finished there, we'll press on.

I started the day today by taking down from the wall our set of HD Tray Table templates. These little pieces of wood tell me everything I need to know to make a set of tray tables, they also help me layout precise screw hole locations and tricky shaped pieces. There is no plan or set of instructions other than what is written on these templates. This is the case with most of our products.

A few people have asked if I’d sell them a set of plans for something we build, the answer has usually been that this is not possible. Not because we refuse to do so but because there ARE no plans, except for those items that use a commercial set of plans at least for a starting point. In those cases I tell them where they can buy the plans we used.

The first task is to select lumber and lay out the parts on that lumber. Today I will be roughing out the parts blanks, so everything is cut oversize. Basically I’m chunking up 8 to 10 foot long boards of rough sawn red oak into smaller pieces from which the parts will be made in a few days. I try to waste as little as possible, but some sections of boards are just not useable for furniture, so I cut them out and we’ll use them for heating our home.

At days end I have all the parts I’ll need for 4 tables and a stand roughed out and ready to trim to finished size. We will start on that tomorrow.

See you then,

Doug