Table, Part X; Finished (Mostly)

It has quite some time since I posted anything about this table, and people have been asking me when it would be finished. It was actually done in August, but the clients were out of the country at the time. Basically, their schedule and mine did not agree for an earlier delivery time. I did deliver it a few weeks ago, but forgot to take my camera with me. These pictures were kindly taken and sent to me by the client. I just wanted to share them for anyone hoping to see the end of this project.

In this picture it is plain to see the reason for the table's unusual shape

A view of one of the feet

Another view

In the title of this blog I said that the table was "mostly" finished;
That is because the chairs for this table are not of a conventional
height and the table must be raised 50mm. I will make some additional
feet to attach to the underside of these bases. 

This weekend I am exhibiting at a trade show in York Pennsylvania, and will be posting about that next week.

Table Progress - Part IX

The table is finally nearing completion. On the third of August the clients will be coming by to make a final approval of everything before I do the finishing. There are still a few loose ends, such as the iron bits that are not all finished, but here is the next to last post on the topic. The next time this table is featured will be when it is ready for delivery. This week we will go into detail about the table leaves and the slide mechanism, as well as a bit of discussion on draw-top tables in general.

One of these days it will actually be finished

I had some pictures of how I made the structural members for the apron, but they were lost when my memory card gave out. Once the supporting sections were completed I began working out the slide mechanism. On a draw top table, the principle is that the slides run under the top and are connected to the leaves. These guide rails are generally long enough that the weight of the top is able to support the the leaf. One drawback to that method is that if someone presses to hard on the extended leaf it will lift up the main section of the top.

When I was a kid we had a huge draw-top dining table and I remember a couple of unpleasant accidents caused by someone attempting to push themselves up from their chair by pressing down on the extended leaf. Not a pretty picture. To prevent this from happening, and because my guide rails are not long enough anyway, I will be using an iron cross-tie  which will prevent the leaves from being pressed down. In this series of photographs that has not been installed yet, however.

Setting out the slot for the guide rails

Cutting said slots

One down...the other three are already gone

The slots in which the guide rails will run also serve as a track for the rails to run in, therefore they had to be cut precisely.

Of course the ends of the guide rails cannot just be square

Cutting out a decorative end

In a situation like this, it is much faster to make a couple of straight down cuts and then use a chisel to finish up the shaping.

And of course they cannot be without a little extra ornament made
with a carving gouge as well

Trimming the ends of the leaves

I opted to use straight timber which had some curve to the grain and cut the curve in the stock, as opposed to bending these short segments. As it turned out, I should have used one piece, steam bent it, and then cut it into segments as needed. It was a bit of a challenge to get the inside curves to meet up without a gap. I did manage, but I think it would have been much faster with bent timber. I deliberately left the end wide so that I could place the finished leaves under the top and trace the outline. Once it had been traced, I cut the waste material off and planed the edge smooth. (I used a spokeshave for the inside curves.)

When you cut from one direction and then turn around and come back to
the place where you stopped you will be able to see if your cut is
running square 

Using a cabinet scraper to do the final smoothing

I love cabinet scrapers, and have no idea why anyone would want to sand instead. In addition to getting a nicer surface, the scraper is one hand tool that actually takes less time than the a machine. It took me less than a minute to get this little pile of fluffy shavings, but to remove the same material with a sander would take at least 20 minutes; not to mention that one would have to change grit 3 or 4 times.

Guide rails in guide ways

The table; ready to receive the main section of the top
The contraption on the end is to prevent the leaf from falling. 

It looks good; it feels good to be at this point as well

Top with leaves extended

One of the things I like to do with draw top tables is to put a little bead moulding between the two sections of the top. This helps to disguise the line between the lower and upper parts. The way I do it is to make the top thicker than the leaves, and then use a scratch stock to add the bead to the bottom edge. The lower leaf is the thickness of the top, less the bead. In order for the table to have a uniform surface when the leaves are extended, however, spacers must be added between the leaves and the guide rails. In this picture, I have not yet put the spacers, thus the leaves are currently lower than the top.

I had hoped to install this iron brace today, but spent the whole day getting the leaves and guides set up. I lost count of how many times I took the top off and then put it back on, but it was many.

One of the two braces which a blacksmith and I made this past week at his
little forge. That was a lot of fun, so much so that I did not get any pictures.
I got to play at being a blacksmith myself.

Table Progress - Part VIII

Our last episode of the table saw the legs completed and the outside frame added to the table top. At that time, there was still a lot left to do, to reach the point of having something that looked like a table. There still is, but as Aerosmith sang, I have been chipping away, at the wood though, not the stone; oh well, it kind of worked.

It begins to look like a table
The block is a counter-balance because the apron section is not yet
attached to the legs.

The first big thing for the continuation of progress was to get the apron built, in order to do that, I  had to make the four blocks that would join the corners together. Actually, at the time of the last post, they were already made, but I saved that bit for this post, because what I intended to do with them might not make sense until one could see the end results.

Layout of the corner blocks

Because the table top is a section of a circle, the corner blocks needed to be slightly wedge shaped to fit their respective segment of that radius. I decided the best way to make them would be to draw a template on my pattern, and use it as a guide to check the blocks, and to set each angle with the bevel gauge.

There is no right angle to any two sides of the block

I began with a square block, and then, using one face, set the angle for the next face, working off the template; I then marked the block to that angle and planed to the line.

Checking the set angle to the block after planing

Working one side at a time, I went right the way 'round each block, planing or sawing and then planing, to get each piece to match the template.

To remove a lot of stock, sawing is faster than planing

Meanwhile, I still had to finish building the top, and that meant adding the inside frame and the two end cleats. Getting the inside piece on was a bit of a challenge, because the tenons would not let the edge slide on. The solution was to bevel the inside edges of the tenons; the farther they were from the centre, the more angle they needed. In this way, I was able to get the part on. I got too busy doing this and did not take any more pictures of the process, or of the end cleats of the frame which are joined to the sides and serve as a means of locking them together.

In order to get the inside frame on, the corners of
the tenons had to be eased

End cleat, connecting side frame rails

Back to the apron project; I decided a long time ago, that the best way to build this table would be to make a box out of the apron section. Since the top and leaves will be movable, they cannot be attached to the apron or the legs, yet somehow the legs and apron must be firmly connected to each other. By making this section as a box, I will be able to accomplish those two goals.

Planing by hand is much more quiet than with a
machine, but it sure makes a mess

To make the box, I began with the timbers which served as the steam-bending form for the frame. I cut the parts to the correct radius, glued them together, and then planed them flat. Since this is the underside, it does not need to be smooth, and I actually like the rough planed look on undersides of things, If you look at any pre-industrial revolution piece of furniture, this is what all the backs, bottoms, and insides of things look like. (Unless something needed to be glued to it, then it had to be planed smoother.)

Now we are beginning to make some progress...

Another advantage of this 'box' method, is that I now have a way of keeping the apron in the right shape. Over time, it could attempt to distort, were it simply an open frame.

...One of these days it might actually look like a table

I left the ends of the 'floor' of the box a bit long so that they could be trimmed once the sides and corner blocks were attached. That took the guess work out of getting the measurements correct. Most people now-days use patterns and plans to make everything. They wonder what historical plans looked like; they did not look like anything, because no one made them. Cabinetmakers just made the parts fit to each other as they went along, their knowledge of how things should be made and joined, and the power of their mind to imagine the entire project in it completion, was their only guide. (They did use templates for unconventional angles and shapes, though.)

With a bit this large, one gets a work out with this
tool (32 holes)

Once the sides were set, I made the mortises in the end blocks. I also made slots to allow for the bottom of the box as you can see here.

Test fitting - Hey, it fits!

Putting together, and then taking back apart, is a big part of this sort of work. I had not even carved the end piece at this point, but since it had to go together and come apart several more times before final assembly, it did not matter. Even if everything fit perfectly on the first go, one still must disassemble it to drill the holes for the pins, assemble it again to mark the holes for the tenons, then take it apart one more time to drill them.

Scrub planes make great panel planes too

With the test fit of the end, I was able to mark the correct line to cut the end of the floor to. It then had to be re-beveled to go into the rebate in the inside of the apron end.

Mechanical method of attaching two pieces together

I do not like relying solely on glue for joinery. No matter how good the glue is, it will fail at some point in future. If glue was all that was holding the parts together, that means to say that at some time in future, the piece will collapse, I do not want that to happen to anything I build, and therefore, I use mechanical means of fastening things. In this case, were the join between the apron front and the bottom to fail, the apron would have a tendency to spread; to prevent this, and keep it connected to the floor, but not have anything showing from the front, I used double dovetail keys, or "butterflies". This is actually a very old joinery technique; in the book, English Historic Carpentry, by Cecil A. Hewett, there is a large "Saxon" door of pre-conquest (1066) manufacture, which used large double dovetail joinery on its face.

One end down...one to go
The gap in the carved channeling is where the slides for the leaves will go.

Once the first end was joined and pegged, I had a sense that finally I was actually making some progress on the table...

Still a long way to go, but it finally begins to look like a table

...until I made a list of all the things which still need to be done. The list is too long, but the major things are spending a few hours doing the final smoothing with a cabinet scraper, finishing the leaves, attaching the legs to the body, and doing the finishing. By the end of the month it should be completed though.

Table progress - Part VII

In the last table post, I had nearly finished carving the feet for the table; except that I had not. I had forgotten all about the fact that the outside face of the main body of the foot wanted a sunken panel carved into it. That has been accomplished this week, and a few more things as well; as you shall see in this post.

I had wanted to wait until the table was in a state of assembly before posting on it again, but realised that there was still too much to cover in one post, so I have prepared some pictures of most of what else has transpired since the last blog on this topic.

Working my way around the perimeter, cutting the
waste from between the tenons

I drew the perimeter line with a sharp point put into my trammel-beam compass which I have been using to lay out this whole project. The point is sharpened so as to cut a fine line as it describes the arc. I took a picture of this compass, but seem to have forgotten to replace the card; sort of like back in the days when I used to forget to put film in the camera. "The more things change, the more they stay the same..."

Using my handy fuchsschwanz to cut the edge; nice
and true

Using a paring chisel to clean up the edge after the sawing

First test of the frame; the small cramps keep the
part flat on the tenons

Sawing the back edge of the tenons (Both saws
were used, but not at the same time.)

This and the following picture are in reverse order. This one shows the
mortises cut...

And this one shows them being cut. The blue tape
serves as a depth stop.

I made the cherry handled mortise chisel and it works like a dream. It requires no hammering to cut a true end on a 30mm deep mortise; just place it on the mark and push it home. using this chisel it takes me four minutes to cut one mortise; most of the time is actually spent with the brace. The rough stock for the chisel was made by a blacksmith whom I frequently use in the Philippines. It requires a lot grinding, truing up, and polishing to be useful but the steel is very good.

Third test fit, but this time frame is actually on the tenons

Because this is part of a circle, the tenons will not simply slide into the mortises as they would on a straight piece. To lay out the mortises, the part was placed on the tenons and cramped in position. Next, a line was traced around them, and then, using a square, the lines were marked out on the inside face. If one were to put the frame back against the top with the centre tenon lined up with the centre mortise, the end mortises are out of line with their respective tenons by about 30mm. This is a result of the fact that rays from a central point get wider the farther they are from the centre. To overcome this problem, and actually get the part to go on, one begins at one end, and presses the first tenon in; then, working around, and assisted by the fact that the tenons have their corners "eased", the tenons are pressed in one by one. (This would also not work if the outside frame was completely inflexible.)

I opted to do the draw bore pegging for the frame, as was done on the individual pieces for the top. I knew that getting it all together and pegged up before the glue chilled would be a big challenge, however. The solution was to put a cramp in the space between each tenon; Once the entire frame was pulled tight, then I was able to go back and drive the pins. In the picture, you can see that some of the pins are not plumb; this is a result of the tension created from the offset holes in the draw-boring technique.

After one more test and some minor shaving, it was
time to glue the thing up.

Once that was out of the way, it was time to get back to finishing up the feet. I bought this big auger years ago because it looked like it was in pretty good shape and perhaps it would come in handy at some point. Well, it has finally had its chance to be useful. When I bought it, the wood was all dry and worn; I gave it a good scrub with linseed oil, followed by a coat of wax. This is what I do with all antique tools I buy. Tools should be useful, but in my opinion they should look good and be cared for as well.

Boring the mortise for the leg

The carving before cleaning up with a scraper

Cleaning up; two scrapers for the purpose are also seen
These scrapers are made from old iron-saw blades, The ends are
honed, and then an edge is turned up with a burnisher, just as
for an ordinary cabinet scraper.

Setting out the field with a task specific made blade, in a commercially
available scratch stock

Today the clients came by to see the progress first hand; this always makes me happy because I love it when people show an interest in the process, not just the end product. Visiting your project in the making gives an understanding and appreciation for something which would be impossible to have, were you to wait to see it until it was finished. This is the second time they have been at my shop since this work began, and they promised to come again before it is finished. I look forward to actually showing them a table on their next visit.

Continuing the carving
When the first picture was taken it was last night; thus I was
working indoors. I moved the operation outside this morning to finish.

Moving to a chisel with a flatter "sweep"

A third go 'round with an even flatter chisel
My aim here is to have a field that looks flat but at the same time still
has some texture of a carved surface.

A bit of finish scraping and it is done

Now they are ready to receive the legs

Two legs and two feet...now they just need some shoes
Yes, I am aware that the back leg is darker than the front; the colouring process
will lighten once it dries. It was applied 5 minutes before the
picture was taken.
The two legs are positioned on the template in the approximate
position they will hold on the completed table.