12′ Cherry Conference room table – day 5
I had a few hours to work today, so I finished up assembling the base.
Drilling pocket holes in the top rails
Since this table will have to fit into the 8′ bed of my truck, I am making it in five pieces that will have to be assembled upon delivery. I am using pocket hole joinery to hold the table top on. I set up my Kreg jig and drilled eight holes in each rail, and two in each side.
Adding a couple to the sides as well
Next, I sanded down all of the rails.
Sanding down all the rails
Base glue-up
Time to start glueing. I applied glue to the inside walls of the mortise, and the shoulders of my tenons, then beat everything together with a rubber mallet.
A little persuasion
After the ends were set, I applied glue to the pockets on the lower rails, then set the cross-bars in place. I also threw a couple of clamps on the lower rails to squeeze them tightly to the cross-bars.
Glueing in the cross-bars
Stepped Miller dowels
To help ensure that my joints stay tight, I decided to add one more form of joinery to this table. I bought a Miller Dowel, stepped dowel joinery kit. The kit comes with a stepped drill bit, and matching stepped dowels. The dowels were available in cherry, and I thought they would look good. I drilled Into the ends of my cross-bars and set a dowel in each end. I also put two through each tenon on the bottom rails.
Drilling the stepped holes
Driving in the dowels
Just wipe on a thin layer of glue and tap in place.
I added some to the cross-bars as well
While all the glue was drying, I finished routing the rails and the cross-bars with the round-over bit.
Finishing the round-over on the cross-bar intersections
Counter-sinking the top rails
I also added a counter-sunk hole and a screw at each intersection of the top rails.
Screwing down the rails
Cutting off the excess tenons and dowels
When all the glue had set up for an hour or so, I came back with my pull saw and cut away the excess ends of the tenons and the dowels, then I sanded all of the ends down flush.
Dowels after final sanding
The last thing to do was run my smoothing plane along the top rail to clean it up a bit.
Base complete
The base frame is now complete. It is too dusty in my shop today to start finishing. It is actually time for a fair bit of clean-up. That router has been pretty busy the last few days and my floor and work benches are covered in shavings.
Ready for finishing
Midnight Woodworking 