12′ Cherry Conference room table – day 4
The rails dried over night so I pulled the clamps. The first thing I did was to plane down the little shim that was filling a gap on the rails. It turned out pretty nice, but I just realized that it will be completely concealed when the table is assembled, so it wasn’t necessary anyway. Oh well, it was good practice…
Shim planed down
Top rails glued up
I grabbed the three cross-bars that I glued up yesterday, planed the sides smooth, and cut them to length.
Planing the sides of the cross-bars
I used them to lay out the notches in the lower rails.
Marking the cross-bar notches in the lower rails
Cutting the notches
I used my pull saw to cut the sides, and unlike the notches I cut yesterday, when I busted out the notch, I left about 1/4″ to still be removed.
Busting out most of the notch
Setting the depth for cleaning up the notch
To do this, I got out my massive straight bit and set the depth using the cross-bars themselves. I then ran the bit back and forth over the bottom of the notch and got a glass-smooth bottom.
Cleaning the bottom of the notch
I test fit the cross-bars in the two notched pieces.
Perfect fit
I paired each of the notched pieces up with an un-notched one and glued them together.
Glueing up the lower rails
I clamped them up and moved on to the top rails.
Lower rails clamped up
Locating the notch depth
I set the top rails upside down into the notches of the side legs. This allowed me to mark the exact depth of the notches I needed to cut into the bottom of the top rails. I then marked out the rest of the notches with my square.
marking out the notch
cutting the sides with my jig saw
I decided to cut these notches with my jig saw instead of the pull saw. Mainly because it was faster, but I also wanted to try another method.
Clearing most of the notch
Notches cut
With the notches mostly cleared out, I cleaned out the bottom with the router.
Cleaning the bottoms
When I did my test fit, everything was too tight.
Fit is too tight
Apparently chisels are sharp on the sides as well
I started to widen one of the notches with my chisel, but my hand slipped and I discovered just how sharp the sides of my chisels are. I sliced all the way across my left thumb nearly 1/8″ deep. I quickly slapped some Nexabond CA glue (basically super glue) on the slice and let that dry for a minute or two, then came up with a different method…
Setting a stop to widen the sides
I thought of a very simple way to open up the notch, especially since I still had the router set up for the depth. I clamped a square tight to the rail, set about 1/32″ away from the router base, with the router set at the edge of the notch. Then I cut the notch wider by running the router along the square. Adding 1/32″ to each side widened the notch a full 1/16″. The sheared shavings from the side were really cool. Somehow they were statically charged and stuck to whatever they hit and wouldn’t let go. The edges of the notch were perfectly smooth and shiny too.
Clingy shavings, weird…
I did another test fit and the rails worked great. The tops were perfectly flush.
Much better fit
I set them aside for now, and moved back to the lower rails. I pulled the clamps on them and planed down the edges. This cleaned up the glue squeeze-out and any burn marks or uneven areas.
Planing the edges of the lower rails
I did a dry-fit, and it looked pretty good.
Dry-fit of the lower rail assembly
These will be set in the mortises, on the legs, so I set up a stop and cut the tenons out with my router and a 1/2″ straight cut bit.
Cutting the tenons on the ends of the lower rails
Tenons cut
They turned out pretty good, so I did a full dry-fit of the table base. It went together first try. The tenons on the lower rails were a little tight, but that is good, a little sanding and they will be perfect.
Dry-fit of the full base is successful
Rounding the edges of the lower rails
Before I glue it all up, I need to add round-overs to both sets of rails. I did all four sides of the lower rails, but left the areas around the notches uncut. I will finish rounding them once the cross-bars are installed.
Leaving it square around the notches for now
Rounding the upper rails
I left the top of the top rails square for the table top to mount to, but rounded both sides of the bottom.
Rounded and waiting to be sanded
Nearly midnight again, so I am going to knock off for the day. Hopefully I will have some time tomorrow to sand everything down and glue up the base.
Midnight Woodworking 