91 - Outdoor Patio Trestle Table with Dimensional Lumber from Big Box Store

[Music] hi everyone my name is James welcome to King's fine woodworking today I'm going to show you how to build this outdoor patio table it's a quick and easy build and just made with lumber from the big-box store but before we get started I just wanted to remind everybody that our Father's Day Sale has actually been extended due to request until the end of June so we've got a few days left here three or four days left to pick up one of our exclusive Thor's hammer woodworking mallets they're engraved with our logo and they're made with exotic wood species from all over the world there'll be a link in the description below if you're interested you can check it out and we've got a discount code it's Father's Day is the discount code and the mallet on sale actually for half price so it's half of our normal price for the sale until the end of the month [Music] [Music] all right so back to our project what we used here was Douglas fir that we got from our local big-box store but you could use pressure-treated or even southern yellow pine and what we're seeing started with is cutting out the feet the bottom units for the legs one of the cool things about this project is you can build it with very few tools you can actually just have a circular saw and a drill and do the whole project no problem you don't need a chop saw in fact I'll do some cutting later with circular saw and show you it's really just as fast so for the feet I want it to be a little bit decorative they're pretty big since they're two by eights so I wanted to cut the corners off of each side and just give it kind of a nice looking profile so I'm gonna flip this over and cut the same thing off of the other side here I didn't really have to put a pencil mark everywhere I just put one the very first time kind of helped me get it lined up with my saw and I've got a little stop there on the left hand side to show me where to where to slide my board over to and that's it this is pretty straightforward to cut these and I'm gonna actually do a little notch out in the bottom so I've got a circular saw here for this and I'm kind of plunging in with the blade and you'll see what the knotch looks like when it's done here I'm going to cut the straight part of it with the circular saw so I get a nice straight even cut and then I'll come back and I'll finish this notch out with the jigsaw this kind of takes my Bigfoot that's going to be on either side of the table and turns it into two separate little footpads so that it sort of has four feet when it's all done I think it makes it look a little bit better and this is a bigger board here it's a two by twelve I'm gonna make this as the lake we're just gonna have one leg on others either side so it's sort of like a trestle table and I want the two to be exact so I've got a little stop set up there on my miter station now I'm doing something a little weird the feet on each side consists of three of these boards put together and the very middle board I'm gonna cut a section out of it and that's what I'm doing here the reason I'm doing that is because I want the leg to slide down into this big three piece foot and you'll kind of see how that looks in just a minute it all makes sense but basically traced out the width of a two by twelve on the middle of the one of the three pieces that make up the foot and you'll see how I put them all back together again here just a second I'm really creating a giant mortise and tenon joint and by me pulling out this middle piece that's the the mortise that I'm actually making so these boards are a little bit narrower and these are gonna make up the cleat that goes on top that basically attached to the leg and attached to the table so they're directly above the feet components that I was making a moment ago and I don't need these to be quite as thick or beefy so they're just made of something that's a little bit thinner this is a two by six here as opposed to the two by eight that I have down below but it's basically the same procedure I've got to cut six of them because it takes three to make up each component and once I'm done with that of course I'm gonna go back and chop the angles off on these two because I want it to look the symmetrical the same up at the top as it does down below and like I was saying a little bit ago you certainly don't need a chop saw this could just be cut with a circular saw and you see it might even be faster with a circular saw once you do all the lines out and you just you know follow those whether your circ saw and cut them out there's no no big advantage to having a chop saw here I think I just kind of get addicted to it because it's sitting here in my shop but this is a fantastic project for somebody who doesn't have a lot of tools if you have a fairly limited shop just like I said just a circular saw and a drill and that's it you can build this whole table it's a lot fancier than say your standard picnic table I think it's a pretty nice trestle design that we came up with and it looks really good all right so these top cleats that are going to go on the leg have the same deal here I've got to cut out the center of the center section in order to create the mortise up top for when this whole assembly goes together it's going to make sense in just a minute when I assemble a leg all right once those are all cut I'm gonna leave those center sections behind and take the the two ends with me over to my assembly table and I'm gonna put the leg in place which I've marked the center line on and I've marked a center line on my foot and then I want to put the middle part of the three components that make up the feet together here and you notice that center section we cut out is missing and that's how it fits together and creates the pocket or the mortise and then we're gonna glue this together I'm gonna use tight bond three which is rated for outdoors and when that's all setup we'll screw it together I'd like to take a moment to ask a favor of everybody out there on our stats it shows that only about 15% of the people who watch our videos are actually subscribers and you know I'm not really pushed for it or asked for people to subscribe and most of the first videos I never did but if you guys like our videos and I would really and you don't mind that would really appreciate if you would click that subscribe button down below by doing that that's really the main way that our channel grows and you know if you're watching the videos anyway and you click that and you click the bell you'd get notified of new things that come out and that really does help our channel grow so I would appreciate that if that's something you could do for us thank you okay here I'm using a countersink bit to just set up and put a couple of holes in there and I'm gonna use a two and a half inch deck screw these are deck mate ceramic coated screws they're fantastic but I'm gonna use a two and a half inch screw because I'm just screwing through two pieces of lumber that are inch and a half thick each so I can't really put a three inch screw because the tip might poke through on the other side so we're gonna put this together and then we got the combination of the glue and the screws I think this joint is gonna last a long time and I'm gonna do the same thing exactly to the other side here and I want to point out all of the knots and the defects in this wood and I did something on purpose I did not attempt to select only pretty wood from the big-box store I'm gonna show you how nice this table looks when it's all done even though I just took wood with defects knots and not holes I don't think those detract from it because overall the table looks good enough so this is something you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of time on you know pre selecting your wood to get it absolutely perfect you could but it's just not that important okay with two of the three layers of the foot done we're now ready to put the top the third and final layer of the foot and you can see how that's going to close that in and create the mortise for us so I'm going to do the same thing here I want to put glue on both sides and we're going to do glue and screws together to hold this together I'm just going to kind of start by lining up one side I'll pre-drill and I'll put screws in it and these screws can actually be three inch screws if I want they don't have to be two and a half's because now I'm going through three pieces of lumber and typically when I do work with dimensional lumber I'll use a bigger screw if I can but by bigger I do stop at three inches I just keep a stack of two and a half sand and threes in stock as well as engine five-eighths or some smaller stuff but those are my three primary sizes and you can see there it's the three inches that I'm using in this case and I'm getting low so I'm gonna have to get back there and get some more here and four joints like this it's a pretty critical joint that's got to bear a lot of weight okay somebody wants to sit on the edge of the table so usually I'll use four screws or sometimes even five screws per joint depending on what the joint is and that concludes the building of that leg unit so it's hopefully that makes good sense now we've got the center section open and that sort of acts like a mortise where the leg will fit right down into that pocket when that's done I'll just clamp this in my vise or you could just have somebody hold it for you and I like to go over the edges with a belt sander and smooth them all up even them all up in case they're not perfectly even sometimes when you buy lumber from these stores some pieces are a little bit thicker some pieces a little bit thinner they're not always perfect so we can dress them up this way and then also if we cut it on the chop saw with my put some burns in it so just take a moment with the belt sander and take all of those burns off I usually put a 36 grit on and that's very aggressive in which really quick gets rid of the burns looks nice so one thing that we're going to do that really sets this apart from your average picnic table or even a regular outdoor patio table is we're going to put a router profile on all the edges we'll put a chamb per bit which just cuts off a 45-degree bevel and I'm gonna do a really big one because this is a big beefy leg and so I have a bigger than normal chamfer bit but you could just use a regular chamfer bit that you buy and just you know bury the bit all the way down so it cuts off a big a big angler big bevel the test piece see what you think looks good and I think you'll see what what we've done here and it just really dresses it up makes the table look a lot more elegant makes a big difference okay so I guess we'll go ahead and test fit the mortise and there she has still photobombing to this day so yep the mortise fits in nice and tight and this is the top piece that I put together not the bottom that you just saw me do that's the top because there's no notch in it but I put it in till it buried and I made a mark of how deep that goes in I'm gonna make the same mark with the bottom this is the foot portion and I don't necessarily have to put it in there but I'll just put it up against the side I'll make a mark I want to know where what would of the leg is gonna be exposed because I'm gonna put a chamfer on that too but I don't want the Sham fur to go all the way down inside of the mortise because it might look weird where the leg goes into the mortise so I'll just chamfer between those two points I think that'll look a little bit better fine if you happen to be interested and you want to build a table just like this one I will have a set of detailed 3d plans available I'll put a link in the description below and it'll give you a complete materials list tell you exactly what you need to buy and exactly what size is to cut everything and how to put it together alright so that's done and I have inserted the leg into the foot piece so for this one's pretty critical because the you see the leg is actually three-quarters of an inch off the ground because of my notch so I'm gonna put five screws in here I want maximum holding strength and I don't want this to wiggle I want it to be real secure because this has got to carry that whole tabletop and I know someone's gonna sit on the edge of the table or something like that so I've kind of spaced out equally five screws around the perimeter here and I'm sure that'll hold and I'm gonna flip it over and I'm gonna put five screws on the other side as well and for those of you who don't recognize the girl in the pink hair that is my next youngest daughter her name is Kavita and we call her cubby and she has decided to come and work in the shop full-time she got very jealous of her sister's here all the time working and so so she's here now so you'll probably see her a lot too you're very familiar with Maya who's always there and then my youngest daughter Tsai we actually have five girls and who you'll see from time to time but Covey has decided she wants to come and start putting in a lot of time so that's pretty cool all right so that mortise fit nice and tight that worked out really well now one thing I want to do is quickly measure from the ground my assembly table is flat so it acts like the ground measure from the ground to the top on both sides it's got to be identical I want to make sure I didn't put this top piece on and it'd be slightly lower on one side than the other which might give me a twist in my table top or cause my table top to lean one way or the other so I just wanted to measure both of those before I put this together and then once that's done same deal we'll put five screws on each side here and when that's done we'll have a complete leg unit now I'll do the next leg unit here yeah we've got another really tight fit which is great if it's sloppy then I got to rely on just the screws but if I get some tightness in there that frictions gonna help out a little bit too and this was just a little check that I did on both sides to make sure that the leg itself was Square to the ground or square to the top of the foot which is of course parallel to the ground before I proceeded to screw those together and then we just put the rest of this one together and that's it for the two legs so when the legs are done I'm going to set those aside and then I'm gonna lay out all of the boards for the top of the table on my assembly table I put them upside down so the pretty side is down and I put a 1/8 inch spacer between each of them now these are all exotic wood spacers but any spacer of course will work even some paint sticks whatever you got get spacers between them and if I clamp them down it'll hold them snug and then I can tap out the warps because you know these boards are never perfectly flat they've all got a little warp but if you keep the clamp tight you can generally tap the warps out in order to proceed working here then what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut some cleats out of some two by six material to screw on the bottom of the table top just to kind of help hold it all flat and I don't really want those cleats having big square corners sticking out for you know when our legs are another table we're reaching under the table so I think if we put a big sham fur on the edge of these things kind of knocked the corners off that's gonna end up looking a lot better underneath those two and we can't forget router it's important to router as much as we can with our sham 4-bit in order to maintain that look and that consistency throughout the build that's what's going to set this table apart and give it a really good look [Music] in here I've marked specific distances from the center so we have these laid out nice and symmetrically I happen to have a big drywall square that I can use to lay across here so we can draw the whole thing in one go but if you don't have that it's okay just make a measurement mark on each side and use a framing square or just measure on both sides didn't use a straight edge like a straight board that works too and that just kind of gives us a reference as to where we want to line up this cleat this cleat is going to basically hold our tabletop nice and flat everywhere we want to take measurements on both sides because we want the the cleat equally spaced from the edge on both sides because that symmetry looks better and then if you can just trick somebody into standing on it and holding it still while you pre-drill some holes and put some screws you're gonna be good to go and truthfully that's one of the best ways to get your younger kids out into the shop to help you they love to stand on things and hold them still while you you put things together they feel like they've really helped out a lot and it really does help you out a lot and then to keep them in the shop all you have to do is build them something cool find out something they really like tell them they can make it and help them make it you know make them a sword make them a box something that they can get involved with and get their hands on it too and they just love that stuff and you know once they try woodworking they're hooked that's that's my experience anyway anybody who gives it a shot just can't resist my girls have always loved it even when they got older and they moved out they'd always call up and say hey you're building anything you know they want to come by they want help they want to be part of the shop it's it's just so much fun and then I could tell you from experience it's a million times more fun if your family helps you out alright so once those cleats are in we're gonna jump to the legs so I've jumped ahead just a little bit here and I have assembled the legs as if they're in their normal upright position we're gonna ignore the tabletop below it for just a minute and these legs are in their normal position I have a little tiny spacer block beneath this rail that's going across the two legs the Trussell is what we're gonna call it and we're gonna just take accurate measurements and we're gonna put that together that trestle is gonna hold those two legs together we're gonna use some long clamps to put these together and you could use a toe strap if you don't have clamps or you just have someone help you hold it while you screw one side in at a time so that we've taken careful measurements to make sure that that's in the center and we've checked with our square to make sure that that trestle that rail is going straight up and down in the middle so it's spaced out the bottom and it's going straight up and down and it's right in the middle and we're just gonna check square on this side as well we've got to move that around the spacer block to check and we've got that that's nice and square and now we'll go ahead and go to the outside and we're gonna mark the center because that trestle is on the very center of the inside we took careful measurements so we're taking careful measurements to mark this on the outside as well we marked it like in a low middle and a high spot and we use a square we'll draw a line there and that's the dead center so that's the line we want our screws going down and then we're gonna take a couple of other measurements marks for where we want to put the screws and I'm not just gonna put standard screws in this we're gonna go with something a little bit bigger it's a grk screw it's like a 5/16 by 5 inch screw a very aggressive screw it's one of the ones that they can use to replace a ledger with it has more strength than a lag screw but it's quite a bit smaller the key before you put them in of course is to pre-drill and you got to use the right size pre-drill bit for those and then all of the threads from the screw will actually go in and bite and it'll be a really strong joint and the rail that goes across in the middle is just the 2 by 10 and I've put the same chamfer on that that they've put on everything else so there wasn't anything tricky about it it's just knowing the measurement is all you need and there's that screw you can see it there it's a grk great big screw very aggressive it has a lot of bite and so three of these together are really strong now I wouldn't attempt to use a regular deck screw here you want something that's gonna penetrate deep and get a good bite for a long way because we're drilling and screwing into endgrain the trestle the rail it's in the middle is trestle table is end grain so it's not terribly strong it's not a strong joint but if we get a real long screw it is so it's worth that extra dollar to go ahead and buy those screws I think they're about a buck or a buck tennis screw so it's worth it to buy six of those to put this thing together with I think the whole projects like about 75 bucks so it's not an outrageous project alright so now we're going to turn around remember we built it right side up so I've got to turn it upside down in order to mount it on the tabletop because the tabletop is upside down as well so hopefully that makes sense there and at this point it's critical to just take nice accurate measurements we want to make sure that it's equidistant from each end of the table and equidistant from each side of the table for us it's easy because I just have one person at each corner but you'll have to walk around the table a couple times if it's just you in the shop taking those measurements but once you get that all set then we got to make some cleats to hold the leg unit to the tabletop now I'm using a table saw here but of course you could just use a circular saw all you're doing is ripping four two by twos to do this or you could just buy two by two so you don't have to rip them I just have this board leftover extra so I'm ripping them once I have them ripped I'll take them over to my chop saw and I'm gonna cut them to the required length once again if this is something that you think you want plans for just check in the description below the video and I'll have a link for you to get the plans that will include every piece that's needed all the dimensions you have to cut everything out and exactly how it goes together once those are sized we're going to need to run a series of holes down two sides because this board this is a cleat it's going to have to screw into the leg unit and into the table so we're going to have screw holes on two sides I like to have my screws about every four or five inches apart and probably not any closer than two inches from an edge because we don't want these boards splitting either I need to give a shout-out to our community group on Facebook it's called Kings fine woodworking community I'll put a link to that in the description in case you're interested but we've got thousands of members it's a closed group woodworking only group you have to sign up to get into it we don't just let anybody in and if your woodworker though it's no problem you get in and it's a place to share your work it's a place to post pictures to ask questions if you need help there's woodworkers of all levels in there there are beginners there are master woodworkers and everybody in between and everybody really helps out answering questions I also write articles for the group and we give me get advance notice on sales and things like that I post that to the group as well so it's a cool place it's on Facebook if you happen to be on Facebook but I'll put a script description in the video below and here I have got to cut the corners off of this but the same reason we did for the cleats we don't want to a sharp edge poking out underneath the tabletop and there they are in place you can kind of get a feel for what they're gonna do so now what we have to do is screw those cleats in place first thing we'll do is just screw it down to the table on both sides all the way and then we'll screw it into the leg unit itself the nice feature here is that in the future if I ever have to disassemble this table maybe to put it into storage or just to move I can just simply unscrew the screws that hold the cleat to the leg itself the legs will come out I can pull the leg units apart and this table will store and pack flat I can do that for moving or for storage this is another thing that kids love doing they can do assembly and it's pretty safe for a kid to operate an impact driver and put screws in sides actually become quite talented at this she's helped us build decks she's probably driven 10,000 screws and putting our workshop together so she actually does this at a pretty high rate of speed and we don't need those spacers in anymore because the table is all screwed down I'm going to show you this tool sometimes you get those holes in there kind of going the wrong way and you can't really get your drill in there to fit so you need a right angle tool this thing really makes things easy so I makes the tool look easy it takes a few minutes actually probably to get used to it but you just put the screw on it and you can get into some really tight corners and you just hold that put the right amount of pressure and it just drives right in okay the table is nearing completion I'm gonna go ahead and cut the ends off I bought eight foot boards which is what I always do they usually have checks and splits at the end these weren't too bad so I always cut some off if your boards are perfect you can certainly leave your table at 8 feet but I think I'm gonna cut about 3 or 4 inches off each side and have a table that's maybe 7 and a half feet or somewhere in that range size marking the other side for me and then after I've drawn my line with a straight edge we'll just go through with a circular saw and cut it off flush all at once now of course this square look on the end doesn't really fit with the Sham for theme that we have going on everywhere else so I'm just gonna take a little quick measurement and I'm going to cut the corners off this is really gonna add a nice touch of class to the table we'll do this at all four corners and I think you'll like the look I want to take one more quick moment to say thank you thank you thank you to all of my patreon supporters you guys are the best - in fact it was you guys who give us the idea to build this table one of you wanted to see it and that's why we have it here if you have is interested in help and support us on patreon I have a link to that below and without you guys there's a lot of stuff we just couldn't do on our channel and we love doing this so thank you so he's got four more screws left in the top part of the leg unit on each side and then it's time to take it off of the assembly table and set it up if you don't have an assembly table you can just build it on your garage floor or a patio floor or even on top of a table saw or someplace like that so there it is that's the basic outline of the table I think the corner cut-offs really make it look nice but of course we still got to put our shampoo along the top of the table itself I like to do the endgrain first because the end grain is likely to chip out so if I do the straight green first and then I get an ingrained chip out the chip out may go too deep so if I hit the end grain portions first and I get a chip out usually the chip out will disappear when I do the straight grain so after that we're gonna sand this all the way around and then we'll take a few minutes and we'll try to sand the whole table top and bottom down to about 150 grit you're not gonna put in too much effort we're gonna give it an oil finish actually it's going to be a Danish oil which is a hardening oil because it's got some polyurethane in it and what we decided to do is to mix we're using watch-coat Danish oil and we mixed it 50/50 with cherry vodka Danish oil and clear natural white good Danish oil so it give us a little bit lighter pink look it looks a little bit reddish here but when it's all done we'll be just very lightly pink and we put three coats of this on and then we actually ran a thin coat of epoxy on the bottom of the feet on each of the four feet to make it watertight and there it is the project is all complete and I hope you liked it thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Kings Fine Woodworking

Views: 330,825

Keywords: Woodworking, wood, how to, DIY, make, maker, build, Outdoor table, diy outdoor table, patio table, diy patio table, trestle table, diy trestle table, outdoor furniture, patio furniture, modern furniture, dining table, diy project, deck furniture, diy outdoor furniture, outdoor patio furniture, picnic table, diy picnic table, beginning woodworking projects, beginning woodworking tools, beginner project, dimensional lumber, danish oil, woodworking furniture projects, watco

Id: EExQhiSNjM8

Length: 30min 34sec (1834 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019