A great looking
dining room table doesn't have to be
bought from the store. I'm going to show you
how you can build one using an old door. This is the door
I'm going to use. It's going to make up
the top of my table. She looks a little bit rough
now, but once I clean it up, it'll look mint. Now, the standard height for
a table is 750 millimeters. Now, the thickness of my
door is 40 millimeters, so I'm going to take 40 off 750. That gives me 710. Now, this board that I've
cut here is 710 high. The width of my
door is 810 wide, so I've also cut this
to 810 wide across here. This is going to be our
pattern for our legs. Now, I've ruled a line
from corner to corner. I'm using this reamer
here for our legs. They have the dimensions
of this, 80 millimeters by 80 millimeters. So from our centerline,
I've ruled 40 millimeters from either side, and
that there is going to be our pattern for our legs. So this template has given
us the exact length and end shape of our legs. We're going to take our leg. We're just going to
put on an outer mark. Lay that down. Just make sure you got plenty
of length to play with. And let's just mark underneath
on the board onto our leg, so that there is the
exact shape we're going to cut on the
dropsaw for our leg. I've just marked the
other end of our leg. Next thing we need to do
is mark where our other leg intersects this leg. So I'm forming a
mark off our board. Let's just rule those up. Now, on this join
here, I'm going to half check the
legs out, so that means they've got to sit
over top of each other, and they're going to
end up finishing flush. So the thickness of my
leg is 80 millimeters, so I'm going to rebate 40
millimeters out of this leg and 40 millimeters out
of the other league, and they're going
to set over top of each other nice and tight. So I'm just going to
mark out 40 millimeters, and then I'm going to chop 40
millimeters out of the top. Now, you just want to
join up your two lines. Now, it's this piece here
that we need to take out. We're just about ready
to cut out our rebate. What I'm going to do,
here's a little tip for you, just going to put my
ruler up against our mark. Just going to use our knife
and put a score on there just before I start cutting. I'm just going to kick us off
on the outer lines only using my handsaw. This is an nice little
sharp tenon saw. This is going to ensure
I get a really fine cut. Now, you can finish
this off, make it a few more cuts
using your handsaw, or if you're feeling
confident and you can use your circular saw,
setting it the right depth and just take care. Rightio, all my fins are cut. Next thing we want to do-- now, just make sure you've got
a really nice sharp chisel. It's going to make the
world of difference, and let's just go
on our line there. Flip that over and just
do exactly the same on the other side. And when you're
using chisel, just make sure you got your
flat part of your chisel on your line and the bevel
of your chisel facing out. Now, we've set all that
out with our chisel. Let's just gently
knock all these over, and then we'll just finish
that up with our chisel. Yeah, just come from each side. That way, you're not
going to blow it out. And because I've got a
nice sharp chisel here, let's just finish
that off by hand. Right-o, that's
looking pretty good. Time to cut the shape
on the ends of our legs. The rebate and the
legs are all cut. Let's just see
how she's looking. Absolutely beautiful. We're going to park these
aside and bring in our door. I've paint scraped it, and
I've given it a good sand. Let's flip this over
and bring in our legs. Now, we just need to fix
our legs to our door, so what I'm going to do is
screw a 60 by 20 piece of timber to our door here, and then
have an L-section coming out. And then I'm going to fix
a bolt through our upstand into our leg that's going
to support everything. I've cut up a 60 by 20. That's going to set
hard on the table top. And I've made a
90 by 20, which is going to sit on top of the
60, and I've cut a 45 degree. Just follow the same
line as the table legs. Leagues Now, I've pre-drilled
the holes, and I'm going to fix these two together. Let's put a little bit
of PVA on our upstand and take our 60 by 20. I've got our screws sitting
in there, ready to roll. Make sure they're nice
and flush on the end. We've made our bracket up. We're going to attach
this to our door. Rightio, let's just mark a
centerline all the way down. I just want to
pre-drill a hole, so aim about the center of each
one of these tongue and groove boards. Thrown a little bit
of PVA on the bottom, what known in the trade
as a liberal amount. Get that flush with our ends. Now, you just want to
make the same L-bracket for the other end. Rightio, legs are
sitting in there nice and lovely all
flush with the end. So what we need to do now is
drill a hole through the center of the legs,
through our bracket, all the way through
our legs, and I'm going to drill a 13 millimeter
hole to take a 12-mil bolt. I've clipped my
leg to my bracket, and I'm just going to do a
three mile pilot hole first. Yeah, we're working with
pretty hard timber here, so just make sure all your drill
bits are just really sharp. I'm using a 12 millimeter
galvanized coach bolt. Try to get that washer on. Now, we don't need to
do it up super tight. Just finger tight
will do for now. Yeah, just repeat the same
for all your other sides. To make this type
of nice and solid, I'm going to add a
rail that goes in between our two leagues. To get the length
of our rail, we're just going to measure in
between our two legs, where it's fixed to the table top. These little bad boys
here are our dowels. These go all the way through
our legs into our rail. So I'm now going to cut
a hole through our legs to take the dowel. I'm using a 32
millimeter dowel, so I've got a 32 millimeter spade bit. Now, when we drill
through, we I'm going to come halfway
from each side. That's going to
avoid any splitting. Now, to get the
center of our legs, we're just going to put our
ruler in between our two leg points and just rule a line. The next thing we need
to do is drill a hole in the end of our rail. Now, to get the center, this is
exactly what we're going to do. Draw a line just from
corner to corner. Boom, let's just
punch a hole in there. Now, we want to go in
there about 50 millimeters. Here's a little tip for you. Now, if you measure from the
flat part of your spade 50 millimeters, and let's just
throw a little bit of tape there. So as soon as I start drilling,
and I come up to the tape, I know, bang, I'm
right on the mark. Next step is cutting across
into the end of our dowel. To do this, we're going
to use a tenon saw. The reason for
cutting this slot is because I'm going to slip a
wedge into those little cut marks, and so once that's gone
through the hole in the legs, that's going to form a really
nice tight fit and a really good detail. And I've got a 32
millimeter dowel, so I'm going to
come 16 millimeters to get to the center. Let's just rule a straight
line, measure up 16 millimeters, and let's just get
90 degrees to that. And I'm going to cut
back about 40 millimeters along the length of the
dowel, so we'll just put a nice straight
line on either side. And we'll just follow
that with our tenon saw. I've just cut my
dowel to length. Now, I know that I'm 50
millimeters into my rail. My leg is 80 millimeters
thick, and I've got about 15 millimeters
hanging on the outside here that I can chop off later. Now, here's a
little tip for you. I've cut a 32 millimeter
hole, and I've got a 32 millimeter dowel. So when I fill this full of
glue, and I put the dowel in, the dowel is more
than likely is going to pop out because there's no
allowance for air in there, so a little tip here. Let's just take our dowel, and
let's just cut a few slots. Beauty-- that's not only going
to allow a fair bit of grip inside the hole, it's also going
to allow any air bubbles stuck in that hole to come out. Everything is set. We've cut our rails,
our legs, our dowels. Now, let's take apart
our legs, set them aside, and start mixing up some glue. So glue your legs together, and
then lift them back into place. So just reassemble your
legs to your L-bracket and tighten them up. Just wipe off any excess
glue before it dries. So we're also going to need some
glue on the inside of our rail just before you put that in. Just make sure you don't
have any dust in there. Just give that a
little tickle up. Lovely. So let's just set our dowel
in there, but we want it-- we don't want it to go
all the way through. Just leave that so it's
just sitting short of it. Repeat the same
for the other end. So let's sling our rail in. We're just putting
our rail vertical. Don't worry about,
at this stages, about getting it all the way. Now, a quick little tip. Our cross that we've
put on the end, let's just make sure that it;s
sitting parallel over our legs, so it forms a nice beautiful
straight cross running in the same line as our legs. Now, that's looking pretty good. Now, we need to crimp
this up, and I'm going to use a ratchet
tight end to do this. Let's just gently
tighten that up, so we can see the
glue oozing out between the rail and the leg. That's looking pretty sharp. Now, let's just--
pretty good there. Now force a little bit
of glue through the sides of that cross. Going to take a nice long
wedge that we made out of Rimu, and we've got two
little wedges to go on either side of that one. This is going to form a
beautiful little cross on the end, and also sit that
dowel on there nice and tight. Sweet, she's all glued up. Everything's set,
and we're going to just let this glue
dry for about 24 hours, and then we'll end
up chopping that off. Before the glue dries,
wipe off any excess. Now, I've got a nice
sharp handsaw here. Just a fine panel saw is all
you need, and just real gently-- now, I just give this wee little
tickle up with the sander. Rightio, we've just
about finished our table. Now, I've got this 60 by 20. I cut this down out
of an old weather board I found lying around,
and I've put a slight round on the edge of it. That's just going to
create a nice, soft edge when we're leaning on
the edge of the table. Now, before we start
nailing this on, we're just going to
evenly space out our nails to make it look nice and pretty. I'm just going to
pre-drill this timber. You know what? It's pretty old. It's been sitting
around for a while. If I put a nail straight into
that, it's going to split. Let's just run a bit of
glue all the way down. Make sure we're flush
with the end of our table. Cool. And just make sure you
take off any excess glue, and the reason for that-- once we put our oil or stain
on, if the PVA's still on there, it'll show up as a
white patch later on. So it's quite important to
get that looking good now. Sweet, she's starting
to look mint. I'm giving her the sand,
taking off any pencil marks, any rough edges. Now, I'm just going to give it
a wee little dust down before we start putting on our oil. That's looking mint. I'm ready for a feed, easy is.
