FWW - Lamont Table

Bartee Lamar

Member
Messages
499
Location
Alpharetta GA ( Metro Atlanta)
Ok, This is the 1st real piece of furniture that I have built. It will be gift for my daughter's wedding on May 12th.

Here is what Fine woodworking thinks it should look like.

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I had to use Sketch up to figure out some of the dimensions and I really just wanted to learn Sketch up. The FWW article for this piece of furniture really makes you think through the whole piece. I have read it at least 10 times.

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I purchased the wood for this from Peach State Lumber Products . One of the thing I wanted todo was do book match the top and shelf pieces. The top is 17" x 21". So I picked out an 8/4 rough piece of cherry. I also picked 2 pieces of 3/4" for the sides and another piece of 8/4 for the legs. I got a piece of soft maple for the drawer sides.

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I started by really looking at the big 8/4 piece to find where I could get the best pieces for the top and shelf. I cut the big piece in half and then had to joint an 11" wide 8/4 x 4' piece. I DO NOT have a 12" jointer. I used a piece of 3/4 MDF, shims and hot glue. Then used by 12 lunch box planer to get a flat surface on the big board. I did OK !!!

Next I cut the two piece that would be the top and bottom and finished planing them.

Then I got to really use my Laguna HD16 BS. It made the cut with no problem.

So I now have the bottom shelf ready to glue and I am going down to get the top ready. My goal today is get the top glued up.

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I also got to use my old jointer which I finally got completed a few months ago. It is NOT great but it did allow me to get a good straight edge to run thru the saw for a dimension cut.
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Comments are welcome.
 
Sunday Afternoon. I spent a few hours working on parts.

Here is what I ended up with.

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BIG QUESTION :dunno:

When I did the re-saw on the 8/4 board so I would have book matched top, I got some curl in the board. I have read several times on forums that wood need s to "recover" from being re-sawn.

Is the stacking with concrete blocks any kind of a good idea ????


I found out how much sawdust resawing can make.

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This is not good since I do not have any dust collection.

All I have is my homemade dust filter.

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Which does a great job, but still have LOTS of very fine dust in the air.

So I hope someone is reading this that can give me some guidance on the curl in my re-sawn boards. The top is going to be 21" wide x 17" deep. So the only way I will have to flatten after glue up will be a hand plane. Which BTW I have never done either.

Do I have any hope ? Worse case I can crate a new top from 3/4" s2s cherry boards.

But I am having fun !!! :thumb:
 
Looking good :thumb:

Yes on the curling when resawing stock. It happens a lot.

Cut, weight it down as soon as you can
 
Steve, I only waited about 2 hours, but I understand what you mean.

Being a craftsman is all about experience and learning from your mistakes. Thanks for the advise.

I will let you know how it works. I am going to leave them under the weight until next Saturday.
 
bartee, how will the top be affixed to the table? quite often a stubborn board can be forced into submission by attaching it to the apron using wooden buttons....don`t forget the router bridge trick if you get tearout using handplanes on the figured boards;) .......tod
 
Bartee - Not much I can add on the curl factor. Just wanted you to know that if you ever need access to a 14" jointer - I've got one and am located just north of you in Cumming. I'm always open nights and weekends!

The project looks great BTW!

- Norb
 
This weekends tasks: Need comments on mortise and tenon design

This weekend I hope to cut the legs and sides. This will include the mortise and tenons.

I still like to draw by hand, so I did this drawing to figure out the exact size of the cuts.

LegDrawings.jpg

The FWW article is very sparse on dimensions.

Do these mortise and tenons look the right size. The scale on the drawing paper is 1 to 1.

Here is a link to the article. You may have to be a FWW web subcriber to see this.

Here is a link to the same article from Google Books.
 
I had a good weekend.

I am having fun.


I got the legs cut. I had them roughed out but had to get to the final 1 3/8" x 1 3/8". I learned the best way to do this is using my lunch box planer.

Next I went for the mortises. My mortiser did great. I did find I needed more light, so I added that little light in the top right corner.

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I was surprised at how much clean out there is todo.

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My 1/4" Two Cherries chisel did great. I bought these 3 years ago, knowing that I would need them once I started building real furniture and not just shop stuff.

I did make my plan getting the sides cut out and planed down to 3/4". I cut the shoulders of the mortises on the TS and cut finished the cuts on my HD16 band saw. The BS is great for this. The 3/4" resaw king carbide blade is great. This is the way to do tenons. I found that I really have a hard time fine adjusting the BS fence. I am thinking I would really like to have the Laguna Drift Master BS Fence (link). BUT is is very expensive. $295 I actually think I can build a suitable fence adjuster with some threaded rod. I will have that for another thread.

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I had to test fit just so I could see progress. I have some adjusting to do on the mortise and tenons, but that is nice hand work, which I am enjoying more and more. It really sorta looks like a table here.

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I also spent some time on the top. Remember it was re-sawed from an 8/4 piece of cherry. So I have a book matched top from the 2 pieces. I am having serious challenges with it staying flat. But I am close. I went ahead and did the glue up. Sorry for the poor image, this glue up table is in a darker part of the shop.

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I am going down in a few minutes to scape the glue line with a chisel while it is still a little pliable.

Next will be the front pieces above and below the drawer. Then I got to fit all the mortise and tenons. The will come the inside support pieces which will all be custom fitted.

I will have to get some time during the week day nights inorder to get this done by May 5th.

Well more later. Thanks for looking. Any comments are always appreciated.
 
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Lookin good Bartee!

There is one thing though. You mentioned that you were supprised at the amount of clean out that you had to do with your mortises. After looking at your photos I think that there is something wrong. It might be that your bit and chisel setup is not right. I would be inclined to think that your bit is not set deep enough in relation to your chisel. The photo below is not very good quality but I think that it is good enough to see how clean my mortises are. This is a three inch deep mortise with one pass and is straight out of the machine with just a small scape and tapping out the cuttings. If you get it working correctly you should have very little clean up, if at all.

This method of setting the correct bit/chisel relationship works for me. Look under Chisel and Bit Spacing. http://www.newwoodworker.com/setupmort.html

If I am off base accept my apologies.

mortise.jpg
 
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Today's progress...

Time is getting short. This has to be delivered May 11.

I fitted all of the mortise / tenons on the legs. Lots of hand work with a chisel.

Then I decided to tackle the problem top. It just was not flat. I got out my Lie Neilsen plane which I had never used. WOW !!! did I learn a bunch and have some fun.

When I built my workbench I knew I would not have great vises and dog holes so I planned to use these double sided clamps to hold work.

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They did a fine job.

On to the actual planing. I had no idea how to do this. So after a little experimentation I went cross grain. This seemed to be working. Then I put down the chalk marks and I could begin so see that I was flatting the board!!!

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This is a GREAT Plane. I am already trying to figure out what other planes I need. I also have a Clifton #4. So I have grown to appreciate really nice planes and the work great too.

I had expected to have to some problems with the flattening process so I got one of those new little PC belt sanders.

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This worked Great!! I did most of the work after planing with 120 grit paper. I got an excellent surface with no sanding lines. My only complaint is this little guy gets really hot.

As you can see I did a LOT of planing.

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My next adventure was hand cutting the dovetails which are used for the top rails on the front of the piece. This is my 1st adventure with hand cutting. I used an 8" straight saw from LV and my 2 cherries chisels.

It takes a lot of tools to do this.

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But I am VERY happy with the results.

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I put in about 7 hours in the shop. Part of this was repairing my Dewalt 713 planer. The exhaust chute had problems.

The shop is working well. I continue to marvel at how useful the Laguna HD16 BS is with the tri-master blade. This gets used for all kinds of fine sawing. Now that I think about it the dovetail cuts could have been done on it very well. I will have to experiment with that before I do the dovetails for the drawer.

It's late and I'm tired.

Thanks for looking. :thumb:
 
Bartee

Nice progress on the table. I built that table several years ago in QS White Oak and it really turned out nice.

Are you chamfering the legs and table rails that connect them?

I also bottom tapered the top - back about 1 1/2 on each side on the tablesaw and then planed to finish.

Keep up the great work - you'll make the 11th. What finish are you considering? I used tung oil and wax.

Neil
 
Neil,

Sorry I have not responded I have been on vacation and otherwise busy.

You table sounds great. I had not thought about QSO. It would take on a completely different feel.

I am going to finish with BLO/Poly/Thinner combo and then a coat of wipe on poly to get a little harder finish.

Glad you mentioned the chamfering on the table rails. I had almost forgot that.

I will be doing that today. See next post for an update.
 
Update, Last nights work.

Well... It is really getting close.

Last night I got back to the shop after a short vacation and a special event at church.

I got all of the pieces finished for the drawer slides and got all of the rabbits cut for the dust panel.

The new router table really worked great for this.

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Here are a couple of shots of the bottom rails.

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Next since I got all of the piece cut I decided it was time to cut the tapers. The taper is not specified in the drawings. The legs are 1 3/8" so I decide to taper to 1".

I have been working to build my shop for about 3+ years. Along the way I have built pieces for the shop to practice and build my skills.

One of the pieces was a taper jig. WOW did it really work great for the leg tapering. Once I set it, I just had to lock in each leg and make the cut. I need to add some push handles for better control.

Here are a few shots of that...

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My WWII blade made absolutely smooth cuts so the finish sanding will be really easy.

Well enough for now.

Today I have to go the Woodcrafters to find some sanding stuff and replace my favorite caliper which got destroyed when if fell off the bench and got crushed my a piece of wood.

More tomorrow.
 
Bartee -

That's a great tapering jig. Could you post the dimensions?

I may want to borrow your idea and make one for myself. So much safer than the aluminum ones that I've used in the past.

Neil
 
WOW, what a day... about 8 hours in the shop today...

All of the parts are done and sanded.

I built the bottom shelf assembly from start to finish. This was a complicated little thing. Tenons that are 1/4" x 1/2" Very tedious fitting since 4 of them are thru tenons. I really like using my BS ( Laguna HD16 w/ trimaster blade ) for cutting tenons.

This is what it looked like at then end of the day. It is finished, sanded and glued up. The entire top of the shelf floats in an a 1/4" rabbit cut in both the top and the side rails. The router table has gotten a real workout. It fine Incra fine adjustment has been invaluable.

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Oh yes, I knew I was going to using the router table a lot so I fixed up the dust control a little bit. It just using my shop vac but it does help.

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I started the glue up process. This is the back legs and back skirt and the front legs with the cross pieces abaove and below the drawer.

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In anticipation of working on the top I built a quick jig to be able to cut the bevel on the top. My saw is an old craftsman with a retro fitted 2hp motor. It DOES NOT like to tilt. Just too heavy. Also I have it set really well for 90 degrees and do not want to move it. So here is a quick picture of what I built. I will give more details later and show it in action.

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I had to quit when I realized I do not know how to lay out a dovetail for the drawer. So I don't know if I am going to have it done by next friday, but I think the daughter will understand. I would rather not mess it up.

I gotta go to bed. It is going to be a long week.
 
big update... got a lot done

Well, started by sanding off the finish on my test piece. I tried the BLO/Poly/thinner mixture since I have read of so many people using it. But it was too red on the Cherry.

Next I had some WaterLox Orginal sealer/finish. I tried it and really like it. So that is what it is going to be.

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Then I got back to the taper on the top. I used the jig I made several weeks ago. It worked great.

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I did cut the taper too deep. It will be ok but is not perfect.

Next I realized if I cut the dust panel, I would have everything done ( except the drawer ). So I could do a full test assembly. So here it is.

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I do have one problem. I am trying to figure out how to screw the top on. I have cut little brackets and have test fitted the top with the screws, but with the dust panel this only leaves about 3" to work in. Maybe I need one of these but I think it will be too thick to get in the drawer opening.


Here is some detail on the bottom shelf. I am really happy with the way this turned out. The thru mortises were a real pain. Those mortises are 1/4" x 3/8".

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So next is the glue up and then I have to get the drawer done. I am going to do hand cut dovetails for the 1st time.
 
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