DIY Dining Table | Mid Century Modern - Woodworking

this episode is brought to you by Grizzly purveyors of fine machinery since 1983 right now you can save 10% on the Grizzly machinery that I'm using in this video plus a few other select items learn more by visiting the link in the description [Music] I picked the bad time to build a solid hardwood dining table this is oak by the way Labor Day in Southern California I don't know why but it seems like it's always about a hundred and eight degrees that weekend on the bright side it did lead to one Epiphany if you're ever wondering what the woodworking equivalent to being tarred and feathered is I have the answer it's dry sweat and caked on sawdust hygiene aside everything that you've seen me doing so far is actually easy work the only thing that makes it mildly tricky is that I'm working with big pieces in a smallish two-car garage so basically I have to rearrange my machinery from time to time in order to make certain cuts in this instance to have enough clearance behind the table saw in order to rip the boards luckily though all of my major equipments on wheels I feel like I'm complaining a lot I hope it's not coming off that way because really I shouldn't be complaining at all in fact I should feel blessed to have a house that can accommodate a big dining table not to mention all of the tools to help make building one a reality not least of which this beast of a planer alright so once all the boards for my tabletop had one good edge on him and had been planed down to an even thickness I took him over to the table saw to clean up the remaining edge and get them ready for gluing this is the first time that I've glued up a table this big it's roughly eight feet long and 40 inches wide and I wanted to spare myself from as much sanding as possible so I placed dominoes about every 18 inches and attempt to really keep the board's aligned with regards to their thickness and it worked obviously I still have to sand a little but I've dealt with a lot worse once the top had a few hours to dry I came back that evening and cut a bevel along all four edges this also brought the top down to its finished size now I don't know if it was because of the heat the thickness of my wood my blade needing to be sharpened or mercury being in retrograde but for whatever reason the track saw really struggled to make these cuts it actually shut down a few times almost like it was overheating each time I just had to wait for a few minutes before I could fire back up so what this did was basically turn a 20-minute task into a much longer one just lots of waiting around [Music] what I eventually did on the last couple edges and something that worked a little bit better was making the cut in several passes just kind of nibbling down a little bit further each time that seemed to get the job but it left a lot of burn marks still so the next morning I sanded all the burned edges and cleaned him up and then I cleaned up the rest of the tabletop as well and then I set it aside so that I could start working on the base for the base on this piece I decided to take a different approach for those of you who've watched my let's talk about design videos you know that one of the most common critiques that I seem to give people is to add a stretcher people tend to draw tables and everything else with legs just kind of jetting out of them and without thinking about how they're actually gonna be attached well for this table while designing I wanted to kind of go against my advice and build something with legs that aren't attached to a stretcher after I had milled and roughed out my blanks I started laying out all the angles I need to cut on the leg pieces by the way each leg is comprised of two pieces for simplicity I'll just refer to them as the upper and the lower the lower touches the ground and the upper attaches to the top anyhow once everything was marked out I made my initial cuts to finalize the length of the pieces by cross cutting them with my miter gauge and then I used my tapering jig to finalize the width than the tapers of all the pieces [Music] to join the upper and the lower pieces together I decided to do mitered corners the lower piece is a lot thicker than the upper and they joined to make a hundred and five degree angle not ninety degrees so the angle I had to cut the pieces ended up being something weird like forty point six degrees the point is once you start getting into these kind of numbers you stop trying to measure things it's a lot safer to just kind of mark a line and then cut to that line next I cut a pair of Domino slots into each of the joints but before I glued anything together I wanted to mortise out some slots for these expandable washers this is what I'll use to attach the legs to the top I started by marking out the intersection of where the washers would go the tricky part is that the mortises have to be cut at a 30-degree angle across the leg to offset the fact that the legs gonna be attached at a 30-degree angle basically in the end you want the washer to run perpendicular to the grain so that the board's can expand and contract across their widths without any issues [Music] once it was all marked up I'm more to stop the slots for all the washers by removing most of the material with a Forstner bit and then cleaning up the rest with the chisel once I knew everything was fitting nicely I came back and drawed out a smaller slot that goes all the way through to accommodate the screw and allow for it to move here you can see how the whole thing functions once it's all said and done so with the pieces all ready to go I started gluing them together [Music] I made these little clamping blocks a while ago and they're meant for 90-degree corners but luckily even though the legs are 15 degrees off of that they still worked any more than that though and I'd probably have to come up with a modified jig or a different solution all together while the legs were drying I whipped up this quick little jig that I could use to cut some recesses for splines on the table saw it's basically a modified version of the picture frame spline jig thing that David could shoot I made then I threw on the data blade and cut out some slots [Music] [Music] [Music] next I cut out some blanks for the splines that were just the right thickness to fit into the slots that I'd cut the purpose of the splines for me is 99% utilitarian as in not aesthetic so I cut them out of the same oak as I'm using for the rest of the table you can still see them a little bit but it's just kind of a subtle detail [Music] the last thing I wanted to do before final assembly was sand and finish everything and while I'm doing that I'd like to take a second to thank all of my patreon supporters new to the list this month are atomic custom works Dave Garcia Howard's soar hog tour fee Chris burg tsin Benjamin thatch andreas Christensen Ken Henningsen Frank Waichman Miguel Rodriguez Niels Mulder's and cats Moses woodworking the appreciation that I feel for what you're enabling me to do will forever be in my hearts in your shirts will be in the mail next week if you want to find out more about how you can support the show to check out the link to my patreon page below and as always no pressure [Music] our dining table is actually the first big and relatively expensive piece of furniture that my wife and I bought when we first moved in together consequently it's also one of the first pieces I remember saying that I wanted to replace back when I started making furniture and so what if it took me seven years to get around to actually doing it people get busy and life gets in the way and the only thing that matters now is it's done and honestly in 50 years looking back we're not gonna remember if it took six months or seven years or even 12 years to get around to doing something those will all be distant memories and all will remember are the three glorious months that we had in before I sold it to make more space so I can build something new [Music] thanks for watching and if this is your first time to my channel welcome if you liked what you saw go ahead and hit that subscribe button thanks and see you next time

Channel: Foureyes Furniture

Views: 318,885

Keywords: Woodworking, wood working, woodwork, wood work, wood, modern furniture, mid century modern, mid century modern furniture, minimalist furniture, dining table, modern dining table, mid century modern dining table, DIY, DIY dining table, how to build a dining table, make a dining table, make, maker, furniture design, designing furniture, build, builder, artisan, artisinal, hand made, hand made furniture

Id: hfITpBfdJLw

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017