Building Blocks

A trio of small blocks are all that are left to build and we are ready for final assembly of these tables. I’ve made up stock for the two small leg-mount blocks (foreground) and one wide latch block for each table. Shaping these blocks is done on the router, but holding such small parts as the leg blocks with my hands while rounding over the edges is extraordinarily dangerous and a great way to loose a fingertip or two. (The router is NOT running in this photo) So instead I use a small hand screw clamp to hold the pieces; it takes a little longer to grab and release the parts with this than it would with my fingers, but it’s much safer. After shaping I sand the parts using a mop sander. I could use the hand screw clamp here too, but about the worst this device will do is to reshape my fingernails, so I just do it by hand – I’m not proud of my nails anyway. I do make sure I sand on the side that if the mop grabs the block and flings it, it will fling it away from me, not at me. Then I drill pilot holes, pre-finish the inside-the-joint faces and attach them to the tops of the legs. The latch blocks are made in a similar fashion except I also cut a dado in the center that will house the latch tab, which works along with the hole in the upper spreader to snap the legs into the open position so the table can not collapse while in use or being moved around. Exactly how we make that part is a closely guarded secret, if I show you how it’s done I’d have to kill you. We don’t want that! [5011-R] Then it’s just a matter of aligning everything just right and gluing and clamping the blocks to the underside of the tray. We can’t use screws here, so glue joints have to be done well or the thing will fall apart. We don’t want that either! Finish sanding follows, then vacuuming and tack ragging and moving the tables and stand into the finishing room for two full coats of lacquer each. After that is hard, I scuff sand them tack them off again and shoot the entire set with a third coat of lacquer. When that coat is set up hard I check the tray panels and scuff sand them again if needed then apply a skim coat of high quality tung-oil based polyurethane to just the ribbon panels. This step is necessary to protect the tables better against modern living than the lacquer alone will. Sweaty drink glasses or warm plates placed on lacquer can cause white spots or rings to form if the water is allowed to absorb into the finish. Even people who have an elegant dining table and care for it properly may forget and abuse these tables, so we add this extra measure of protection to help avoid problems. They’re done and ready to package up. We’ll look at that process in the next episode.

Building the Stand

The starting steps in building the stand are like those for all other parts; cutting the parts blanks a little oversize from rough lumber, jointing one face and one edge, thickness planning the rough face to finished thickness and ripping the rough edge to finished width. Then we lay-out the shape of the parts on the blanks using the templates. I use a Forstner bit to provide a smooth transition for inside curves by boring a carefully placed hole then band sawing the straight lines and the outside curves. These cuts are all smoothed up on the stationary belt sander. Then I lay-out and counter-bore screw holes. Where the uprights meet the feet I use dowels to reinforce the joint, these holes are laid out and bored with the help of a doweling jig that insures the holes are centered in each piece. Once all the parts are made I assemble them with glue and screws then plug the screw holes. After the glue dries I trim and sand the plugs flush and finish sand the stand. This part is now ready for finishing and will get set aside until the lacquer flies. I should note that this is a *custom* stand made to hold two tables, Wanda did not need a full set of four tables. All that’s left to make are the little blocks that hold everything together.

Tray Rails

We begin the process of making and installing the tray rails by setting up the big band saw for resawing. The resaw band has wicked, large teeth that will tear the flesh from my hands if I’m not careful, leather gloves are a necessity. Then comes marking and resawing the billets that were made up earlier. It is vital that I mark the billets so that after they’ve been cut I can keep them paired up and oriented for proper grain flow. More about that in a bit. As the pieces come off the band saw I set them aside in pairs, when all are done I surface plane the strips to smooth the band sawn faces and reduce the strips to the finished thickness. I also check them to see if there is any bow in the vertical plane, if so I joint that out before trimming them to finished height on the table saw. Then I change the table saw over to use a dado head and set it up to plow the groove on the inside face of each rail stock strip. This groove will house the panel assembly. I use a set-up block from the template set to get the dado head height and rip fence position right. When everything is in position and double checked, I plow the panel groove in all the strips, paying close attention to inside/outside and upper/lower edges. I finish up the rail stock preparation by rounding over the upper-inside edge of the strips. This edge will be very difficult to work after the tray is assembled, so I take care of this one now. The others will get rounded after assembly. Now comes the tricky part… unwinding each pair of rail strips so they wrap around the tray with an unbroken grain pattern. To do this I use an old box-makers trick that starts with resawing a solid piece of wood, then cutting the two pieces so each piece cut mates up with the next. I start at one end of a pair, lay out the left side rail, then the back rail. Come up to the other strip and lay out the right side rail then the front rail. With very little excess length in each strip, where the two raw ends meet at the left-rear and right-front corners, the grain pattern will still flow nicely around the corner. The other two corners are cut from the middles of the strips and matching those is easy. I set up the miter saw to cut the 45 degree miters at each corner and cut all the parts using stop blocks to insure that all longs rails are the same length and all short rails are the same length. The first of each are the guinea pigs, these I cut just a little long and sneak up on a perfect fit. Once the precise length is determined I cut the rest to the same length. When all are cut it’s time for a dry fit to be sure all went well. No glue here, just friction. When I’m sure all is right I take the rails off again and sand the inside faces. Again, these faces will be difficult to work properly after assembly, so sanding them now is a great labor saver. Then glue is applied very carefully to the joints where the rails meet the backer panels. The rails are not glued to the ribbon panels. Clamps are place to apply gentle pressure to hold the corners closed until the glue dries. No screws or nails can be used in these joints because they are so slim and delicate, proper glue joints are mandatory. I’ll let these assemblies set up overnight, then pull the clamps, route the outer edges and sand the outer surfaces of the rails. And that will complete the tray assemblies.

Ribbon Panels

I am actually almost done with these tables, but have been focusing on getting the woodworking done and not on blogging about it. I’ll get that caught up as soon as I am able. Sorry for the delays, but this order is over-due so I've been putting 12 hour days trying to get it caught up This step will be to make the ribbon panels. I call them ribbon panels because they’re made up of thin strips (or ribbons) of solid wood that are precision edge glued together to form, a wide panel for the tray top. There are several advantages to doing it this way, including the fact that if the table top should be dinged or scratched, the damage can be sanded out and refinished without destroying the table. Using veneered plywood here would mean that repairing such damage would be very difficult if even possible because the veneers used are so thin (mere thousandths of an inch) and will sand through very easily. The ribbon panels also look much prettier. The down side is that building these panels takes a good deal of time and effort, where simply cutting a piece of plywood and popping it in the slot is much faster. But we at Smoky Mountain Woodworks are not so much about speed or cheap as we are about quality. We want you to have furniture that you will be proud to own – and proud to hand down to the next generation. We start with pieces of wood that have been jointed and surface planed so that the faces are absolutely flat and smooth. These faces will become our glue joints, so there cam be no defects or snipe. Bear in mind that we are making a full set of trays and stand, two all walnut tables and a custom stand for Wanda, the other two tables will be our Signature Series made of walnut and oak and will be used for photographic purposes, then will probably head off to our living room where we will conduct extensive product testing . As I cut the strips I lay them on the extension table in the same order I cut them from the billet, this preserves the natural flow of the grain pattern and makes it easier to get a good looking panel. I like to use lumber that is as close to flat sawn for these ribbon panels because when I re-saw them the strips end up being quarter sawn and displaying some strikingly beautiful grain, especially in woods like oak. When I have all the strips I will need cut (and a few extras, just in case) I begin to lay them out and check the patterns. The ideal method here is to cut all the strips for one panel from one wide board, so that the pattern flows naturally from one edge to the other. But, these days most of the old growth timber has been cut and getting wide boards that are predominantly flat sawn is rare. So I will use two or three boards per panel, and by careful attention to color and form, match them up for a good looking panel. I use a couple of strips of wide masking tape pulled tightly across the panel to secure it once I’m happy with the lay-out. If any of the strips have developed a little spring to them un cutting, I’ll use a bar clamp to pull the strips snug while I tape. Fold the assemblage in half and take it into the assembly room for glue-up. I built this lop-sided “A” shaped jig to help me apply glue between the strips quickly and efficiently. The tape acts like hinges between strips when placed the panel is placed on the jig up side (tape side) down. I use a small brush to apply Type III polyurethane glue evenly between the first strip, move the panel up, glue the next joint, move it up, and keep going until I get to the last strip. When all joints are glued I move the panel over to a set of clamps that were placed at hand, 3 underneath two on top. By alternating the clamps I can insure that I don’t mold a bow into the panel due to the clamping pressure, and I am assured that the panel pieces won’t go “SPROING” and fly all over the place (giggling incessantly) when I apply pressure with the clamps. While clamping I pay attention to the seams, getting them all as flat and even as possible – there are a lot of them to monitor as I snug up the clamps! I’ll leave this stage sit overnight so the glue will develop a good hold before I take it out and machine it further. It takes 5 days for this poly glue to develop its maximum hold (by then these tables will be on their way to Wanda) but this glue will grab well in a few hours. Giving it overnight to set up makes sure none of the joints will pop open during machining, the surface planer especially will induce a good amount of vibration in the panel as the knives strike the surface repeatedly. The next morning I pull off the clamps, scrape the surface to remove glue squeeze-out, trim the panel to rough width (so it fits through the 15” wide surface planer) and surface plane it to remove most of the roughness. Quarter sawn wood has a tendency to chip out in the surface planer, so I switch to the wide drum sander (photo) as soon as feasible for final smoothing. This tool takes of miniscule amounts of wood with each pass, so reducing the thickness very much will take a long time, but results in a superior surface in the end. Wha-La! Two perfect panels! Next I trim these panels to exact width, which is 1/8” narrower than the backer panels, and glue the ribbon panels to the backer panels, leaving a 1/16” overhang of backer on each side. This does two things: first it allows some room for the panels to expand in humid weather and it prevents the ribbon panel from getting glued to the rails during final assembly of the tray. Because these panels are solid, natural wood, they will expand and contract across the grain as the wood fibers swell and contract with the changing humidity. No finish, no matter how good will prevent that –it’s just a fact of life, we furniture makers have to learn to deal with it so parts don’t crack and joints don’t fall apart. When the glue is set-up I take the panels to the table saw equipped with a large miter sled and trim the ribbon panels to be even with the ends of the backer panels. Why don’t I leave a gap here like I did on the long sides? Because wood dos not expand and contract along its length, only across it’s width. These edges can be flush, and in fact making them flush will help to strengthen the tray against racking. Now I finish sand the panel assemblies, front and back. Finish sanding them well after the edge rails have been added will be far more trouble than doing it now. When I’ve gone through all the grits I wipe the panel down with clean mineral spirits to simulate a finish, this is how it will look when I spray on the lacquer – are there and glue spots, or chips, or crazy grain that need more work? Now would be the time to fix them, not after the first coat of lacquer is on. Once the mineral spirits has evaporated I pre-finish the long edges of the ribbon panels. This is so that when the panels contact a narrow ribbon or raw wood does not peek out from under the rail edge. Yes, it is possible that capillary action will pull some finish into the joint between rail and panel, but I don’t want to count on that. Yes it’s possible that even if a sliver of raw wood exposes itself that no one will even notice, but I don’t want to count on that either. I’d rather do it his way and be sure. This completes construction of the panel assemblies. Next up, tray rails.

Legs

This week we began a new project; a set of tray tables for Wanda. She wants hers to be all walnut, we also have a grandfather clock for Harold, also in walnut, and I’ll need walnut to work some more on the entertainment center in our living room. It’s been sitting half-done for 2 years, maybe I ought to get that completed. So, I started by hauling in from our lumber yard a whole bunch of rough sawn walnut lumber and standing it against a wall near the chop saw. I get out the template set for these tables, check them to be sure they're all there and in good condition, then picked through the lumber looking for pieces that were best suited for each part, and cutting the boards down into parts blanks with the chop saw. As I roughed out the parts I stacked them on the workbench and placed the template on top of each stack to help me identify which parts each stack was to become. I’ll start with the legs. I use a machine called a jointer to flatten one wide face, and one edge of each leg blank. These blanks will each produce from 2 to 5 legs, I need sixteen for a full set of tables. Normally, the step after jointing a parts blank would be to surface plane it to finished thickness, but in this case I’m going to break with convention and move right on to the table saw where I will rip ONE leg piece off of the blank, edge joint the blank, rip another leg off, edge joint the blank again, and repeat until the blank is cut up into legs. Why? Because ripping a wide piece of wood into two or more narrow pieces releases tensions in the wood itself and releasing these can cause the wood to bow or twist. Jointing the fresh edge flattens it again as well as smoothing away the saw marks. This reduces the amount of bow or twist the finished legs will have. When I’m done I have 16 leg parts that are 1/8” oversize in cross section and about ½” too long. Now we move into the final milling and shaping phase. This starts with sending the set of legs through the surface planer to smooth the remaining two sides and (and this is important) make the legs square in cross-section. Diamond shaped legs will make things come out all screwey. At each thickness setting each leg goes through twice; once with one un-jointed face up, then turn it 90 degrees to do the second un-jointed face. By always keeping a jointed face down on the bed, all the corners will come out at 90 degrees because I jointed the first two face flat and at 90 degrees to one another. The final step in milling the leg parts is to trim them to exact length. I do this on the chop saw, a.k.a. compound miter saw, equipped with a stop block to set the length so all legs come out the same. We start to make actual legs out of the leg parts by using my templates to lay out where each of the screw holes that will hold the base together will go and boring screw holes and countersinks or counterbores with the drill press I use a combination bit that drill the shank hole and the countersink/bore at the same time. The difference between a countersink and a counterbore is the depth. So by watching my depth I can perform all three functions with the one bit. The templates also allowed me to trace the shape of the upper and lower ends of the legs onto the leg blank, so I use a stationary belt sander to shape the parts. I use a crepe abrasive cleaner stick frequently to keep the sanding belt from loading up and causing the wood to burn. Then it’s back to the work bench where I use a random orbit sander to smooth all faces of the legs. This is construction sanding, using 100 grit paper. Finish sanding will be done later. The orange hose pulls the sanding dust away to keep it out of my lungs where it will cause emphysema which generally proves lethal. When the sanding is done I pre-finish the areas of the legs that will be inside pivot joints. And assemble the leg pairs at the main pivot. Getting finish in the joint after the table is built will be difficult, and not getting the job done will mean raw wood can show through when the legs are in some positions. This just insures everything looks good when I’m done. The second part of the base is the spreaders, which – as the name implies – spread and brace the legs. Doing these right is essential if the table will stand true and even without annoying clunking sounds as you close up the table. I start by jointing one wide face and one edge of each spreader blank. To do the edge I run the just jointed face against the fence to insure a 90° angle where they meet. In this case, a perfect edge is not essential as I will be rounding the edges anyway, but in most cases it is, so I use the same practices anyway. I run these blanks through the surface planer, jointed face down, multiple times to smooth the rough face and reduce the part’s thickness to the required ½”. Then the parts go to the table saw where I set up my precision miter fence. I trim a little off each end of the blank with the jointed edge against the fence to insure that both ends are good and square. These spreaders will determine the positioning of the legs and could induce unwanted bends if they were not square. Then I get out one of the most clever templates I have built; it does multiple things, as you will see. To start, it slips over the jointed edge of the spreader blank and allows me to trace the curve of the arches. The lower spreader is shaped like a bow tie with an arch on upper and lower edges. The upper spreader has an arch only on the lower edge, the top edge becomes part of the latching mechanism, and this jig lays that out for me as well by taping a nail through the two holes in the template. Then we go to the band saw and remove most of the waste wood from the arches by cutting just outside the lines. I could try to cut on the line and sand away any imperfections, but I have found a better and faster way. I put the spreader back in my clever template which has arms to grab and position it, chuck a flush trim bit into the router table and set the depth so the bearing on the bit rides on the template. In this way the template not only guides my pencil when I trace the shape, but also the router bit to cut away the last 1/16” or so of wood, leaving a smooth, perfectly shaped arch. Pretty cool, huh? Then it’s on to the drill press to make the oval shaped hole or slot that will allow the latch to hold the table open when it’s set up for use. I’m trying something new here – our camera has a video mode to take short video clips. Feel free to drop me an e-mail and let me know if you like or dislike this feature. Hmm... Blogger does not allow me to position the video clip like I do a picture, so I have no idea where that will end up, I'll use a picture here instead. The video may end up at the end. Then it’s back to the router table, swap out the bits for a round-over bit and round off all edges, except for the ends of course!. Now comes the tedious part – sanding. I can do the wide faces with the random orbit sander, but all these rounded edges have to be sanded by hand. This takes some time to do it right, so you might want to grab a soda or coffee out of the break room. One last thing this clever template does is to locate the pilot holes into which the screws that pass through the legs will go. These have to be perfectly placed or some very strange things will happen. I mark only one spreader with the template, then use that to set up a jig on the drill press. Once that jig is clamped firmly in position all the spreaders can be drill with the same setup. Here I’ll show you how it works. Or, maybe not. Again, I'm not sure where the video clip will end up. Finally, I assemble the legs and spreaders to for the bases. I do not use glue at this stage, just screws, nor do I plug the screw holes. It is possible adjustments will be needed later on. And that completes this step, now we will move on to making the tray panels. That will be done in a separate post. See you there! Time to publish this one and see what it ends up looking like.