Table Saw, Jig Saw and Miter Saw -- Nested Tables 7

Today was all about finishing off the bulk ripping and cross cutting. You can see first I had to cut some shorts off of a very large piece of Mahogany. This piece is huge. It's about 12" by 7/8ths by about 9 ft. long. This is very awkward to crosscut with a table saw. I always get out my jig saw in cases like this. You can see the table saw is very useful as a workbench, if nothing else.

The small stiles that are the indicative feature that makes the project look like craftsman style all come from my horde of 1/2 by 3/4" rippings. You can see why I have to include this design element into the piece. I have tons of this stuff to get rid of.


Now a bunch of careful crosscutting with my antique Langdon Miter saw and it's all coming together. This thing rates high on the gizmosity scale and it actually works very well.



And here's the final results: All of the bulk ripping of the linear pieces. Note: It is essential to keep all the pieces organized. With all the bulk pieces for three tables at once, it's easy to get them intermingled. Now it's time for jointing the tops. That's tomorrow's chore.

Woodworking Plans and CAD -- Nesting Tables 6

Today was spent getting my Woodworking Plans finalized with ViaCAD. I have to say, the learning curve has been steep, but I'm gradually getting the hang of ViaCAD. Switching from AutoCAD has not been easy. All of the commands are in different locations and there is just a huge difference in the software design approach. I can't say yet whether ViaCAD is less good than AutoCAD or what. I'm still struggling to remember where all the commands are located.

ViaCAD has some good points. 1) I have it. 2) It was cheap. 3) It does the job, and 4) It has full 3-D rendering capability, which I can't do yet.

Here is the front view of my nesting table design. It fits several criteria: 1) It efficiently uses the Mahogany shorts that I want to use up, 2) I can build it with my current tooling and skills and 3) My customer seems to like it.



Also on today's task list is finishing the prototype nesting tables that I built from scraps. I'm going to stain them, distress them and finish them with semi-gloss urethane. My distressing technique will be to roll a chunk of concrete over the surfaces, sand down the corners slightly and spritz some droplets of black spray paint over the top. This system of furniture distressing has worked well on other projects, so I have every reason to believe it will work out well here. I'll show Pics when they are done.

Ripping, Pocket Screws and CAD - Nested Tables 5

This weekend was occupied by a number of arcane tasks related to the nested tables project.

First, having previously planed the mahogany shorts that I wanted to use for table legs, it was a simple matter to run them through my tablesaw. The width of the shorts was just wide enough to make 4 legs each, so at the end of the process, I had all 12 legs.

Unfortunately, I realized that the material I had available for the longest legs was just about 1 1/2 inches too short. Not to worry, I will just have to modify the design slightly.

Fortunately, I was experimenting with the prototype tables. As I mentioned previously, the larger prototype table has no rail in the front and is therefore too flexible. I think I may have solved this problem with pocket screws. I've never used my new Kreg pocket screw kit until this afternoon, but it seems to have worked very well. The front legs of the table are much more stable.

The advantage to the no front rail system is that the stack up from one nested table to the next is much less, and thus I should be able to lower the height of my highest table enough to use the legs cut from the shorts, rather than cut up any of my longer pieces, which I want to save for other projects. For this to make any sense to you, the reader, you should take a look at the picture of the prototype tables.

Now, it's back to the CAD software to lay out the new design concept with the shorter legs. I'm using a CAD package called ViaCAD. I'm used to AutoCAD from work, but the ViaCAD got good reviews and it's not expensive. It's interface is very different from AutoCAD, so I'm still in my learning curve. I'll report back someday whether or not it's a good CAD package.

The other task was to apply a conditioner of dilute BLO on the prototypes. I decided they turned out so well I should stain and finish them. Since they are a mixture of scrap Ponderosa pine, white pine and SYP, they will probably take stain very inconsistently, so a coat of conditioner to prep them for staining seemed in order. We 'll see how it works out.

Prototype Using All Hand Tools - Nesting Tables 4

Here are the two prototype tables I built from scraps. They look pretty good, but there are some flaws in each one. The larger table doesn't have a front rail. I did this first because "Nahm's" plans are this way and second because it minimizes the stack up as you build each table over the next.

The bad part is that the table is too weak. I'm not going to build my final version this way. I will have rails all around, supporting the top and stiffening the legs. The front of the two larger tables, by the nature of the system, can't have any stretchers or the tables won't nest. Leaving out the rail is just too much for the integrity of the structure.

The next thing to investigate is how to join the top to the frame. In the smaller table, I used through tenons, right through the top, with wedges. This is without a doubt a very strong joint, and the table top will not come off, ever. Unfortunately, it looks ugly.

The next table has countersunk screws with wooden plugs. This looks better, but just doesn't seem strong enough, especially combined with the no-rail system. The plugs, while better looking than the through tennons, don't look all that great. I think in the final version I will use pocket screws or figure eights.

There were a few other learnings from the prototypes:
1. Chopping all those tiny mortises by hand was not too hard or time consuming, but

2. Sawing all those tiny tenons was a royal pain. The layout was very time consuming and subject to error. Scribing all those lines on so many tiny tennons was just laborius. The sawing was also tedious. Hand sawing in such fine detail is no easy task. I think I may cut these tennons with a dado attachment on my table saw.

3. All those little stiles really did a lot to stiffen up the piece. They are very functional as well as decorative.

Truing Stock With Hand Planes - Nested Tables 3

This weekend was all about truing my stock for the nested tables. I have some fine mahogany shorts that are going to be perfect for the legs of my tables. They are just a little more than 6/4ths, which is just enough to true the faces. They are just wide enough to get 4 legs out of each board. These are part of the hoard of mahogany I got from a cabinetmaker who was going out of business. He was a victim of the mortgage crises.



In the first pic, you can see me jointing the first board with my KK-6. This is a crappy plane. It's frog is decidedly inferior and is very fussy to adjust. I swear I'm going to use it for a boat anchor and get a Lie Nielsen or at least a Stanley Bedrock. Nevertheless, after fussing around with it, I got it adjusted sufficiently to get a good reference edge.



In the second picture you can see me facing the piece. Note the handy planing stop. This is a piece of plywood screwed to a scrap of white oak that is griped in my vice. The stop can be tilted up or down for any thickness of wood and gives square support across my entire workbench. This idea came out of Chris Schwarz's book on workbenches from Popular Woodworking.

If you look closely, you can see my traditional jointer's mark on the reference edge (pointing the wrong way, unfortunately).



Next, I'm using my fancy artistic winding sticks, which are really two pieces of aluminum angle from the Orange Borg, artistically painted with Oleum de Ruste. Actually, extruded aluminum angle is dam straight and makes a fine winding stick and straight edge. It's also extremely cheap.

Finally, you can see my little Stanley #4 smoothing plane finishing off the piece. I have three more pieces of stock to prepare for my legs, then I will hold a mass ripping event and rip all twelve legs in one session.

Hand Chopping Mortises, Nested Tables 2

The nested table project is all about mortise and tenon joints. I've never hand chopped mortises before, so step one was to get a good mortise chisel. I had a couple of sash mortise chisels, but I figured out the hard way that they weren't the best style. The traditional pig-sticker mortise chisle works better, at least for me. The elliptical handle is just more intuitive for keeping longitudinal alignment. I have a 1/4" Marples that I got off E-Bay and a 3/8" Ray Iles from Tools for Working wood. The Ray Iles is a little heavier duty, but both are workable.

It's a good thing that I started on a prototype made from scrap, because there is certainly a learning curve. Look at the mortise in the picture. The wood fibers have blown out the end of the piece. I've never seen wood blow out quite like that. It's good to have this happen on the prototype, not on my expensive mahogany. The solution to this problem was to keep the mortise farther away from the end of the piece and be a little gentler when chopping in.

After several trials, I ultimately got to the point that I could chop the mortises fairly precisely. I scribed a depth line on the side of the chisel with a vibratory marker so that I could keep depth consistent. It is also important to sharpen every face of the chisel since every arris is a cutting edge.

Saga of the Nested Tables, part 1

My customer (my daughter) wants me to build a set of nested end tables. After much negotiation we agreed on mahogany as a building material and a design similar to the one pictured. This is the target. We will see how close the final product matches the target.

We looked at plans from several sources, including even buying a set of plans from The New Yankee Workshop ("Nahm"). I even received a loan of a book of plans from my new friend Ron (who shall otherwise remain anonymous), who knew me only from chatting at WoodCentral.com. He actually mailed me his book!

After amalgamating the dimensions and joinery concepts from these sources, I came up with what I thought was a good overall joinery strategy and approximate dimensions. However, knowing that my fatherhood was on the line, I figured I needed to make a prototype out of scraps, just to be sure my skills were up to snuff. Here is what I came up with. How I got here is the subject of the next few posts.