Hall Table - Sort of a build-along

[jteneyck]

I'm building another hallway table for a lady I made a similar one for last year.  This one is wider and shorter to fit a spot not far from the other.  The drawing of it looks like this.  



The legs are tapered on both inside faces, from 1-1/2" down to 3/4" at the floor.  I'm using white oak, except I didn't have any heavy enough stock for the legs, but I do have 
Burr Oak, a member of the white oak family with a slightly greener look, but since it will be stained an almost opaque gray I think it will be OK.  

I got the leg stock planed to just over 1-1/2" and then made a sled to cut the tapers.  There are many ways to make a sled, some incredibly simple.  This one is not too far above that.  It's just a piece of 3/4" plywood with a stop at the back, and some fences screwed to it so the foot ends up just over 3/4" with the right taper up to 6-5/8" below the top of the leg.  You just butt the leg against the stop and fence, adjust the fence until it just kisses the edge of the plywood, and run it through.  






It all went w/o issue - until I put the four legs together in the orientation they needed to be.  Rut ro Rover:



I started with stock that had only been planed to thickness and not ripped into 1-1/2" squares.  That shortcut caused me to have to index all four pieces of stock on the sled with the same orientation, instead of two with the grain at 90 degrees.  I would have seen the problem had I tried to put this diagram on the ends before I cut them.  OK, what to do.  I had enough stock to make two new ones, but I didn't like the face grain on the one exposed face.  This could be avoided by using rift sawn stock, but I didn't have any that thick, and didn't feel like making any from thinner stock.  So I decided to sand down the face grain face by 1/16" and then glue on a piece of quarter/rift sawn veneer.  

I needed to make another sled to accommodate the tapered face of the legs so that the face I needed to sand was parallel with the base.  One of the tapered cutoffs was the perfect solution.  I slid it under a leg until it was at a constant height above the base, and then glued it to the sled with hot melt.  



Off to the drum sander to remove 1/16".  When that was done on all 4 legs, I cut some veneer and ran it through the drum sander to get my 1/16" veneer.  I traced the shape of the leg onto the veneer, rough cut it on the bandsaw, and then glued it to the leg.  



When the glue was dry I used a palm router with a flush trim bit to trim the veneer.  




I prefer to use a handheld router over the router table because I can safely run a climb cut, something I'd not want to attempt on the router table.  A climb cut all but eliminates the risk of tearout, a real risk with this oak and with the way the grain was running.  After the veneer was trimmed and a little sanding, I had this:



The seam is almost impossible to see and will be if I run a small chamfer on the edges.  So now the legs have quarter/rift sawn grain on 3 faces.  The plain sawn on the last face is oriented so it is least likely to be seen where the table will be located.  Of course, I could have added a piece of veneer to the fourth face, too, but didn't feel it was necessary.  

And that's it for today.  Thanks.

John

[rwe2156]

Veneer is a nice touch for legs. I've done it a few times and always been happy.

[jteneyck]

The water heater repair cut into my woodworking today, but I did get the veneer trimmed on the other legs and then cut the mortises in the legs and stretchers.  You all know I use a horizontal router mortiser for cutting mortises.  If you don't have a Domino or Multi-router or Panto-router it's the perfect machine and costs far less by multiples.  



Here are some of the mortises.  The stretchers on the sides are centered on the legs but the ones for the rear stretcher are offset so the stretcher is 1/4" from the back of the legs.  I had to do this to leave enough room for the drawer slides.  




The arrow on the parts tells me which side faces up during mortising, so I don't get confused.  That happens easily these days.  BTW, the Burr oak legs are HARD, much harder than the white oak.  I would not want to try chopping those mortises by hand in that stuff.  After cutting the mortises, I made some loose tenon stock out of scrap from the project.  I planed it until it just slides into the mortises, then ripped it to width and rounded over the edges on the router table.  

  
Then I cut them to length and fit them into the mortises.  





Thanks for following along.  

John

[joe1086]

Looking great, as always.

Love my (your) horizontal mortiser.

[Tapper]

Looking great, as always.

Love my (your) horizontal mortiser.

I'll second that - works as advertised!

Doug

[Martin S.]

Thanks for the nice build along.

Nice horizontal mortiser!

Thanks for posting. It is appreciated.

[jteneyck]

With the joinery on the table done I clamped it together to get the final dimensions for the frames that hold the table together at the front and also house the drawers.  



The frames are joined with loose tenons.



I also bored the holes for the pocket hole screws that will hold the frames to the table, then glued them up. 



Before I forgot, I fit the inserts into the bottom of the legs for the leveling feet.  This house has beautiful white oak floors that are anything but level, I mean bad.  I first tried to use the T type inserts.  I was worried it might split the leg and, sure enough, it did on the first one.  



After shooting some glue into the crack and clamping it I moved on to brass inserts.  I was worried about them, too, so I used the largest hole I could that would still allow the inserts to cut threads, and they went w/o issue.



With that done I glued the legs to the side stretchers.  I used tape on each side of the joint to prevent glue squeeze out from getting on the wood.  



I wipe any squeeze out away right after glue up, before it sets, and then peel off the tape.  This prevents any little droplets from sticking in the corner of the joint where I might not see them.  After those two sections were dry, I test fit the frames into the table to make sure all was right, then glued the back stretcher in place.  When that was dry, I pulled out the frame and then worked on the dividers for the two frames.  They are just pieces of white oak at the front glued to Baltic birch at the back.  The drawer slides will be screwed to these.  



The dividers are glued and pocket screwed to the frames.  You'll see notches in the frames at the corners.  These are to fit around the legs.  You'll also note I use an 18V drill with the Kreg jig to bore the pocket holes, but I use a 12V driver to drive the pocket screws.  I found that it's easy to strip out pocket holes if I use my 18V driver, but the 12V is slower, and the sound changes dramatically when the head of the screw hits the bottom of the pocket hole, so I'm far less likely to strip out the hole in the mating piece.  Here's the assembled frame.  



To install the frame in the table I just slid it in from the top, clamped it well, and then drove in the pocket screws.  



With the top frame screwed in place, I flipped it over and inserted the screws through the bottom frame.  

  
The main table is ready for finishing.



Time to start on the drawers.  Thanks for following along.  

John

[Tapper]

Looking good, John! Interesting technique in joining the frame to the leg assembly with pocket screws. Looks like pretty close tolerances there to make it fit snugly and be pretty square. Were there any adjustments necessary to get a tight and square fit?

Doug

[jteneyck]

Looking good, John! Interesting technique in joining the frame to the leg assembly with pocket screws. Looks like pretty close tolerances there to make it fit snugly and be pretty square. Were there any adjustments necessary to get a tight and square fit?

Doug

Thanks Doug.  I used the same process on the prior table so I knew it would work.  Yes, the tolerances have to be good, but by measuring those dimensions on the dry assembled legs and stretchers I'm assured it will fit OK as long as I cut the parts to the correct lengths.  I did a test fit to confirm.  Then I glued up the table around one of the frames, so as long as that was square the table would be also.  It's mostly a matter of thinking about how to order the process steps to make it as easy and foolproof as possible.  

I could have used a higher level of joinery for the frame to leg assembly but it's a hall table, not a dining room table, so it doesn't have to be made for constant or high forces of abuse.  If I were more of a purist, I would have dovetailed the cross rails into the side stretchers and set the dividers in with dovetails or dados.  It just didn't seem to warrant that level of effort.  

John

[Tapper]

Thanks Doug.  I used the same process on the prior table so I knew it would work.  Yes, the tolerances have to be good, but by measuring those dimensions on the dry assembled legs and stretchers I'm assured it will fit OK as long as I cut the parts to the correct lengths.  I did a test fit to confirm.  Then I glued up the table around one of the frames, so as long as that was square the table would be also.  It's mostly a matter of thinking about how to order the process steps to make it as easy and foolproof as possible.  

I could have used a higher level of joinery for the frame to leg assembly but it's a hall table, not a dining room table, so it doesn't have to be made for constant or high forces of abuse.  If I were more of a purist, I would have dovetailed the cross rails into the side stretchers and set the dividers in with dovetails or dados.  It just didn't seem to warrant that level of effort.  

John

Practicality usually wins the day. My guess is those joints will never fail unless severely abused. 

Doug