Mahogany dining room build

[Ken Vick]

After a fairly busy (at least for me) woodworking summer up north I have been in Florida for a few weeks now and it seemed like a good time to catch you up on a couple of my projects.  We are getting ready to renovate our kitchen next year so I decided to build a new dining room table to go with the new kitchen.  Some of you may remember that I put a post on Woodnet looking for inspiration for the table.  My woodworking buddy, John TenEyck, suggested that maybe an oval center pedestal table by Tim Rousseau in Fine Woodworking (#249, Sept/Oct 2015) might serve as a starting point.  At this point I acknowledge the essential help of John--he basically designed it with my wife's and my input including all the sketchup drawings--throughout the construction.  This picture shows the design we settled on except the breadboard ends were added after I had the top glued up.  John did not appreciate the beauty of a fairly large tight knot towards the end of one of the boards and he shamed me into getting rid of it.  Since I did not have another board suitable to use in its place, I shortened the top enough to get rid of the knot and then made up the length with breadboard ends.  It is a much larger table than Rousseau's FWW table so we modified it for 2 pedestals. 
 

We adjusted the dimensions of the pedestal vertical elements and their profiles to be more appropriate for a 2 pedestal table.  This requires some adjustment of the joinery.  I used loose tenons throughout.  For the most part I used Rousseau’s construction method.  
 
The very large mortises would have been a struggle for me with my tools so John gave me a hand by cutting them on his J/P with its mortising attachment.

 
 
A stack of the pedestal vertical elements, feet and top supports with mortises and grooves cut.
 
 
Glue up of the pedestal vertical elements happens in stages.  Note that the half lap joinery for the feet and top supports has already been done.  Another tricky point is that the feet and top support has to be perfectly parallel if you want all the feet to be in the same plane of the finished table.


More to follow.  Ken

[Ken Vick]

More pictures of the pedestal glue up.





Here is a picture of the glued up understructure lying on its back.


 
 
Gluing up the top.
 
 
Planing it nice and flat with the #7 I bought years ago from a Woodnet member.



Google keeps telling  me that it is running out of memory so more later.

[Ken Vick]

Cutting the long mortise in the breadboard end on the horizontal mortiser I got from John.



 
To cut the mortise in the table ends, I stood them on end and clamped additional support to the table faces and cut the mortise with a router and edge guide standing on a ladder.


 
 
Gluing the tenon into the end of the table.


Recesses cut for the ebony bling diamonds and splines



Table ready for sanding, dye stain and varnish.



The final installment of this post will be the finished table.  Ken

 
 

[Ken Vick]

These pics were taken by John and show the table details.  Sorry for the long post and thanks for sticking with me.  Ken











BTW the breadboard ends are glued in the middle and fastened on each end with these neat fasteners that John knew about.

[davidmichealco]

Beautiful table Ken!

[Steve N]

Pretty smart construction detail, and the pics look like you carried out the details very well. = very nice table you don't see every day at the furniture store

[WaterlooMarc]

What thickness did you finish the top out at?

[atgcpaul]

Ken, very nice table. I think excluding the knot was the right choice.

[mound]

very nice! thanks for the writeup and pictures.  I'm about to embark on something very similar.

[jteneyck]

Ken, as nice as those pictures are they still don't do justice to how beautiful your table looks in person.  It's about as perfect as possible, and I think Rousseau would be pleased with the adaptation.  I really enjoyed our discussions to come up with a final design, with Michelle's critique of course, and helping occasionally but mostly watching as the table took shape through the build process.

Now about some chairs to go with it.

John