build a dining room table

build a table with folding leaves to fit in the small space that we have yet still feed 5/6 people comfortably!

I want to build a dining/kitchen table for my family. There are seven of us and I want to create our very own table where we can have all those important meals together. Dinner time is the only time the entire family is together, most days. I want a table that we all had a hand in creating. I want a table we can all be really proud of. I want a table that is a product of our hard work.

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I am in the early planning stages of a similar project though out of recycled Cypress. I have not read the whole blog, but where did you get your plans?

When my brother was here two weeks ago, we worked on the table a little. I over routed a bit and had to patch it with a plug and while I wondered if I should make another leg, he said that nobody would ever see the flaw. Then he said, “I know you, though, you’ll point it out to people.” He thinks that I should just let people discover these things on their own if they ever do at all. That I should stop undercutting my work by preemptively pointing out all the mistakes.

I think maybe he’s right. I think I do it because I don’t want people to find them and think that I didn’t know about them. Maybe it’s a false humility thing. I don’t know.

What I do know is that if you want to hear about the flaws in this table, you’ll have to come to dinner and find them yourself. I’ll probably point out the flaws in the dinner that I cooked while you search, though.

In the meantime, I’ll tell you that every day sanvea tells me it makes her happy to come upstairs in the morning and see the table. She thinks it’s beautiful.

As promised, here’s a picture of the assembled table before stain.

You can never have too many clamps.

(NOTE: I’ll have to post the picture later… Oops, Oops, Oops… UGH)

I think I’ve failed to post anything from the last few work sessions.

I hand planed the top, and doing the bottom first really paid off. I had a lot more control and it turned out very well. I bought a random orbital sander to replace the 1/3 sheet that died. It RULES. I am really pleased that jitterbug up and croaked. If you’re still using an old shaker, do yourself a favor and stow it and get a random orbital. I have more sanding to do on the top, but it’s coming along.

I sanded all the externally facing frame parts, 60, 150, 220 and assembled the frame.

I have also attached the top to the frame to test.

A couple things of note. We did color swatch tests on the bottom and we picked a color called Sedona Red. Our runner up was “Honey Pine”. The red is unusual and very striking. I did the whole bottom in the color. My problem with it is that it doesn’t let the color variations and wood grain show very well. I thought I was ok with that. However, I had to bend the corners of the table down which involves soaking them and clamping. In soaking them, the top of the table when wet showed grain that I found really beautiful. So, we’re going for the Honey Pine which lets the grain show through.

I did spend a lot of time selecting the wood for pretty patterns… seems odd to cover it up with the red stain.

Oh, and Girl In the Curl? Note the cordless DeWalt on the ground. It’s my brother’s but I used it just for you. AND THE BATTERY DIED. Stupidly, I wasn’t charging the other one at the same time. I would have finished the job with my corded one but I seem to have lost my chuck key. So, I did all the side supports and the top fixture with the cordless. I have to admit, it does a good job. The keyless chuck he has is really convenient, but I’ll have to drive the last bit of some tight screws with a keyed chuck cause it just spins and hard torque.

I’ll take some pictures of the assembled table before I stain it.

I am very, very pleased. I think it’s going to be great.

I’m totally enjoying sanding. The bottom of the top is looking nicer and nicer. The divot fills in with sand dust and I forget it’s there for a moment. I’m sort of meditating on sanding, and like in meditation, a thought jumps into my head and I hop on the thought train.

I think about when I bought this 1/3 Sheet, Black and Decker Variable Speed Sander, oh, about 20 years ago (Jesus H. Christ I have 20 year old tools). I bought it to make some book shelves, which I still have and we still use. When I bought it, my girlfriend at the time thought it was a waste of money and that we should have just bought shelves. She thought that $40 (or whatever) was insane to spend on a tool. Even back then, I had the reputation (not completely unjustified) of buying expensive things to use once or twice and then moving on to the next thing.

So, I’m thinking about how cool it is that I moved this sander from apartment to apartment, sometimes using it, mostly not, but all these years to be able to use it here, in my shop, in my house, and how $40 went a long way. I’m getting a bit gloaty, even feeling frugal about it.

Then the fucking thing stops working.

Damn, Karma, you work fast.

I have never used a hand planer. My only instruction in using a hand planer, aside from it looking pretty obvious and seeing it on T.V., came when I bought my new one at Rockler.

Rockler Dude: “You use a hand planer much?”
Me: “Nope”
Rockler Dude: “Don’t get discouraged.”

So, armed with the instruction not to get discouraged, I decide a couple things. I want to test out the 5 tiny cans of stains I bought to see which color we like. I figure that the bottom of the top is the way to go on this. I know that scrap sounds appealing to some of you, but I want to see it on the butcher block. I figure I’ll treat the bottom of the top as if I were doing the top of the top. This will allow me to learn to use the hand planer on an invisible section of the table, it’ll give me an excellent practice run, it’ll give me a place to see how the sanding will make the wood look and then I can test the stains.

I’m really glad I decided not to just start with the top of the top. I learned to “tune it” by not cutting, adjusting, not cutting, adjusting, jamming it, taking it apart, leaving too much blade and taking out a serious divot in my bottom of the top. This is when I decided that I had purchased a Deep Wood Gouger.

However, by the end of it, I actually started getting the hang of it. Between the planer and my electric sander, I got the bottom of the top looking pretty decent. Sadly, it is not yet ready to stain. I’ll tell you about that in the next post.