Building a Shaker Walnut Dining Table

I'm using black walnut, but other hardwoods like maple, cherry, etc will work great too. I'm jointing and planing faces mostly to see what the grain looks like for the board selection process. Choosing the best looking boards and picking the optimal order of them for the table top is critical. I'm making some curved cauls out of a 2x4. They will help hold the boards flat when gluing up the table top. Both sides are given a slight convex shape with a hand plane. I probably should have made this curved even more. When you clamp each end together, there is constant pressure down along the entire length of the caul. I'm jointing the glue surfaces flat and square. I use Titebond III glue. No dowels, biscuits, or dominos are needed. The glue joints are very strong. The cauls hold the boards together flat. Sawdust and plane shavings are great to get rid of excess glue squeeze out. I actually ended up adding a few more clamps after I filmed this shot. I used a block plane to clean up some dried glue. More hand planing to smooth the surface. No major flattening was needed. I used a poor man's track saw to trim off the excess. I use a marking gauge to scribe the bevel location. I'm marking the underside of the table here. This bevel is most safely cut with a hand plane. I used a scrub plane first to remove most of the material, then a jack plane to fine tune the bevel to marking gauge lines. Planes work backwards too! Easier than switching to my left hand to follow the grain direction. Next I rough cut out the material for the legs. To avoid wasting lumber, I had to resaw some stock. I will glue it to the top half of the legs where they need to be thickest. Gluing up the legs. Oops I forgot I don't want glue there. Cutting out the four legs on the table saw. Cutting each leg to the same length with a cross cut sled and a stop block clamped to the fence. These markings help keep track of which side of the legs should have mortises and which should be tapered. Using a marking gauge to lay out the mortises. I remove most of the mortise waste with a drill press. The green tape marks how deep to drill. Please subscribe if you enjoy this :) Cleaning up the mortises with chisels. Drilling the holes for the drawbore pins. I use a sacrificial piece to prevent chipout from the drill bit inside the mortise. Checking the dowel depth. Now I am working on the apron rails. I'm cutting a tenon into the end of each rail on the table saw. I smooth the tenon surface and fine tune the fit into the mortise with a router plane. The first step for a drawbore joint is to clamp the joint tight. Next mark the dowel center locations with a drill bit. Now disassemble the joint. Use an awl to move the markings about 1/16th closer to the shoulder. Drill dowel holes through the offset marking locations. The offset holes will force the dowel to bend as it is hammered in, which squeezes the joint shut while the glue dries. I chose to cut the leg tapers on the bandsaw. A tapering jig on a table saw would work too. Taping the offcut from the first taper back on to the leg makes cutting the second taper easier and safer. The offcuts are also handy to help hold the tapered leg in the vice. Using a handplane to smooth the rough cut surface from the bandsaw. This upsets me just rewatching it as I type up these subtitles... Fortunately no real damage was done :) A chamfer on the bottom of the legs helps prevent the wood splitting when the table gets dragged across the floor. Applying a slight roundover to the legs and the underside of the apron rails. The dowels need to be slightly sharpened to help them get through the offset holes in the drawbore joint. Here I cut small grooves into the inside of the apron rails. They will be used to attach the table top to the frame. This is a sliding dovetail joint into the long apron rails. It will hold a cross member. Gluing together the apron rails and legs. Technically clamps aren't needed with proper drawbore joints. The dowel bending through the offset holes pulls the joint together. I didn't film making this cross member out of poplar. The dovetail was cut on the router table. The cross member adds support to the table top, and keeps the long apron rails straight. Flush cutting the dowels off and planing them smooth. Temporary nails are useful to keep things off the floor when applying finish. I used three coats of wipe on polyurethane (Arm-R-Seal Satin). I made these braces out of poplar as well. They add extra strength to the corner joints. I made these clips on the table saw off camera. The grain goes in the longer direction for optimum strength. It is important to not insert them all the way into the groove. This gives room for the table top to expand and contract. Green tape helps prevent accidentally drilling all the way through the table. I lost count of how many coats of finish I put on the top. It was a lot, this table will get heavy use.

Channel: dk builds

Views: 662,116

Keywords: dkbuilds, woodworking, DIY, easy woodworking project, easy woodworking, project, make, build, woodshop, wood shop, making, building, dk builds, shaker, walnut, mortise and tenon, fine woodworking, diy woodworking, how to build a table, carpentry, how to make a table, how to build, how to make, asmr woodworking, instructional woodworking, poplar, design, woodworking design, woodworking plans, primitive technology, asmr

Id: btPGtq0hYTE

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 20 2023