Building A 12' Hard Maple Conference Table: Part 1

how's it going everybody welcome back into the shop I've got a very exciting episode lined up I'm building a four foot wide by 12 foot long maple conference table now the base is made out of steel and my good buddy Cameron Fisher fabricated that base for me I'll put a link in the description to his Instagram account so you can check out his work I really appreciate it that base came out looking great for this video this is gonna be a two-part series and so in this first video we're gonna focus on gluing up the maple top this is hard maple we're working with and since it's 12 feet long is a pretty tricky glue up so you're gonna get to see the process of milling the lumber joining it running it through the s4s and then sanding it and then then the final step of getting that glue joint tuned up and the whole tabletop glued together it's a great video for those of you who are interested in learning that process and for it those are just interested in seeing how a large tabletop is fabricated so let's get started okay so it is time to start milling the maple for the Valcour common stable now when I say Valcour I'm talking about the company I'm making this for so there's no real special name to that I just what I call it so it's in my notes is that Feist now the challenge with this is I have to join 12 foot links and I'm doing it on my own I've been kind of dreading this because it's really not an easy thing to do plus my jointer is only a 58 inch long bed so it's not even capable of getting a good edge on 12 feet I have a stand I'll put up I just want to get them close to straight lined when you're working with big heavy material these gloves are a lifesaver they help you get a grip on things and they save your hands because I'm 36 and my hands already feel like they're getting arthritis so these will help me get a grip I've worn the crap out of these there's holes any new pair [Music] [Music] [Music] now what I'm finding to be difficult it's actually going a lot easier than I thought it's just hard work it's the start of the cut that's really hard it's hard not to want to let that board the back end drop and not take enough and then it's hard not to want to lift it and then kind of scoop it out and take too much off the end so they look fairly straight which is which is promising but that those ends are kind of tapering off so hopefully I can cut those ends off when I cut back cut the length okay so these boards on the floor are the ones I've discarded for various reasons probably more because there's some twist in them and I don't want to deal with that but one of them has a huge bow in it along the edge I don't wanna deal with that either so what I need to do is go through what I want to keep and use and just make sure I'm gonna measure the width add it all up make sure I can hit 48 and then I'll proceed with ripping off the widths nine plus nine plus five point five plus seven plus eight point five plus five point five plus eight point five equals 53 inches we're good to go that gives me three five inches to work with as I process these down rip them straighten them out and clean up the edges so that's great we're good [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so let me explain real quick what this machine will do for me I've got four cutter heads in here one two one in here three and one in here for so the first cut takes a cut off the bottom of the board second cut takes a cut off this edge of the board the third cut takes to cut off the opposite edge which I set my width here and then the final cutter head takes the thickness of the board down to whatever I said it has a nice long table so this machine will really not only will it mill everything in one pass but it also straightens everything pretty pretty nice so my hope is the s4s will really make these joints nice and tight and if it does then I'm probably going to defer my original plan of keeping knees wide and go ahead and rip them and run those to the s4s and that way I pretty much have everything jointed through the big machine way easier than trying to figure out how to joint these okay so I want to set my thickness I'm gonna take it to 1.8 1/2 which is thirteen sixteenths and then my first board I'm going to take two four and one-eighth so that's four point one two on the dial words gonna run right into that mortiser so now I get to move [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I love that machine that is such an awesome machine so glad I have it there's been so many times where I thought about selling it and when I use it I'm like man I got to keep this it's such quick work of milling lumber okay so it's time to start laying out these boards so since it's maple it doesn't have a very distinct grain pattern so I'll try to match things up the best I can but this is a pretty simple layout I'm like I said I'm gonna lay out a 24 inch and a 24 inch do it in two sections and then we'll glue it up [Music] [Music] okay so this is what I've got I've got the two sections they're each about 25 inches give me a lecture to work with I'll use my Festool Domino and put Domino's in all along here and the reason for that is not for strength but just to help line everything up when I put it together in the clamps because these boards have a little bit of warp in them but they're fairly straight from on the edges which is the key for a good glove [Music] [Music] okay welcome back into the shop when we last when I last left you guys I had just flew it up this top I've already got the other half of the top and the clamps over here I did that early this morning this top now is ready to go through the white belt sander here I've loaded it up with an 80 grit belt I'll start with 80 grit got a 120 then go to 220 and I'll write down my number I finish out whenever I the clamps later today I'll run it through doing the same thing to the exact same thickness and then we just got to get those two joints straight and make the glass glue up to get the full 48 so I'm just gonna set up and do a little bit of time-lapse and get you through this real quick [Music] [Music] okay so I've got both sides sanded I need to correct myself I said I was going to 220 but it's actually a 150 grit that final pass so what I'm gonna do is take I've got one side up here on the benches and spanning both benches I'm gonna bring the other one over set it up see how my joints fit hopefully there's not a whole lot of tweaking to do but those joints need to be really accurate so let's put them together and kind of see where we're at looks like we are going to need some work here we've got contact at the ends it looks like we're open on the top a little right there cuz probably hitting on the bottom a lot of square the middle gaps a little bit bigger than that gap which is not a bad thing you would rather you have a little bit more of a gap in the middle than on the ends you want to be forcing the ends together so the only way I'm going to be able to join these boards together is using a router there's they're just too heavy to move to my jointer and too heavy to get in the workbench to work with a hand plane so what we need to do is get a straightedge that runs the full length of this top and use that as a guide in a reference for my router to run against and cut this full thickness in one pass we'll just take the slightest bit off maybe an eighth no more maybe just a sixteenth if we can do it [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so I've got this one edge run with the router and I'm really pretty happy I've got a clamp on to see how it all turned out I haven't done this edge but I don't think I'm going to need to it really looks good and it's sitting pretty flat you can see the level down there there's no bow or kink in this top at all and I'm I've got a good nice spring joint so I've got about a sixteenth gap maybe a heavy sixteenth gap with the clamp is and it's tight on the ends so when I I can put a clamp right here and essentially I could clamp the whole top up that way I mean the gap is clean there's no gap the whole distance up maybe right here so I probably need some clamps there but if I pick up on this one side it doesn't slide at all that is the pressure of that clamp on that is holding it so that's an excellent joint there's no need to keep messing with this you can always make things worse by trying to make it better so at this point I'm gonna lay out all my dominoes cut those in and then we'll get this thing in the clamps [Music] okay so for the most part I'm really happy with how this came out I've got a nice flat surface all the way across we've got that one glue joint that will clean up with the cut with a cabinet scraper and a hand plane so this will get to sit overnight come back first thing in the morning cut it - link cut it to width and then we got a lot of sanding to do with the orbital and then finish and we're gonna deliver this thing as always I really appreciate you guys tuning in I hope you enjoyed the build in the process of fabricating this tabletop I'm excited to bring you guys the next episode here real soon it's gonna be real interesting we're gonna finish up the top cut and access a really cool little access for cord management for the Commerce table and then this the delivery on this was really sketchy and interesting so you'll get to see the process of using a scissor lift to hoist this table up unto a second-story loft so stay tuned that video will be here shortly and as always thanks for tuning in

Channel: Andy Rawls

Views: 178,462

Rating: 4.8924732 out of 5

Keywords: conference table, gluing table top, jointing wood, jointing table top, woodworking, andy rawls, wood and metal, table with metal base, metal base

Id: 8ozPsDqltX8

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 30 2018