Giant Dining Table Delivered

Messages
1,521
Location
Austin, Texas
I posted this on Facebook (where I hope to attract customers) and had a huge reception, including many from this forum. But I am feeling guilty for not sharing with my woodworking "family."

Last weekend I delivered a solid Mesquite dining room table that expands to 4 feet wide by 18 feet long. Too big. I will never build another one like that. It over-filled my shop, with final assembly in our living room. At one point, I had to call the neighbor to help turn it over. The basic table is 4 x 8 feet, with 5 leaves, 2 feet wide apiece. The customer plans to have one leaf in routinely, and add more leaves as required.

RedmDR1.JPG


Note that at this point there is only one leaf in the table - overall length 10 feet, or just over half size. I used slides from Osborne Wood Products - great slides, but when they are this large they probably added about 60 pounds to the table.

RedmDR2.JPG


The legs were two layers of 8/4 Mesquite glued together and turned. I do occasionally turn spindles and bowls. There are middle legs that fold down when the table is fully expanded.

RedmDR3.JPG


The customer wanted their initial inlaid in one of the leaves, with turquoise granules. The customer specifically requested that the wood grain in the leaves go the opposite way from the main table. Whatever!

The usual cracks and gaps in mesquite were filled with black epoxy - I estimate over 50 batches mixed and applied over several weeks.

The finish was quite simple... Target EM1000 sanding sealer, sanded with 320 or 400 grit, followed by Target EM8000cv gloss conversion varnish, rubbed out with Mirka synthetic steel wool, Maroon very fine (about P360) followed by Dark Gray ultra fine (about P1200), then rubbed with an old T-Shirt. All rubbing done with a Festool 6 inch sander, except the legs which were hand robbed with an almost dead Mirka dark gray pad.
 
Great looking piece of work Charlie.

Haven't had the pleasure myself but I've heard mesquite is a tough wood to work (hard and hard on tools), must have been quite the endeavour to build!
 
WOW, Charlie! What a monster. That's some of the best looking mesquite I've seen. Isn't it hard to find long straight stock like that? Any idea how much time you have in it? Beautiful work. I hope it gets you some more commissions.
 
Looks like they are going to need more chairs. Wonderful job on the table, would love to see more of the slides and extra legs, but understand if it's not possible.
 
WOW, Charlie! What a monster. That's some of the best looking mesquite I've seen. Isn't it hard to find long straight stock like that? Any idea how much time you have in it? Beautiful work. I hope it gets you some more commissions.

I was looking at tht also, but there really isn't any piece on that table over 4 feet long?
 
A beautiful piece. Love the story about the challenge to assemble and deliver. There are those pieces we didn't charge enough for no matter how much it was, hope it wasn't quite that bad :). I enjoy making pieces for folks with larger scale homes. Probably because it is so different than my own home.
 
That really is a beautiful piece Charlie.

I noticed the sideways grain in the leaf right away, and personally I think it adds a lot of character and uniqueness to the table.

The finish came out really nice too! :thumb:
 
WOW, Charlie! What a monster. That's some of the best looking mesquite I've seen. Isn't it hard to find long straight stock like that? Any idea how much time you have in it? Beautiful work. I hope it gets you some more commissions.

Berdoll Sawmill, near Austin, specializes in large slabs and local wood such as mesquite. (He has a chain saw with a 9 foot bar, and a planer 100 inches wide). The pieces of mesquite I bought started at $12 per board foot, and went up from there. I asked Brandon how wide he can get mesquite and he said he had some (if I recall right) that was 42 inches wide, and fairly often gets some logs over 30 inches in diameter, but he was quick to point out that such wood is FAR more expensive than $12. He takes a trailer truck around Texas to pick up or harvest special logs. There were lots of filled areas that I tried not to show in the pictures - especially in the 2x2 edges, etc.

I thought I should allow a month to build the table, but it took closer to 3 months wrok in the shop, and more than that total with the Holidays. I would have lost money if I had to pay myself.


Looks like they are going to need more chairs. Wonderful job on the table, would love to see more of the slides and extra legs, but understand if it's not possible.

They bought 8-10 chairs, for the minimally expanded table, but the table will seat over 20 easily. I bet they don't want to store the chairs (in addition to the challenge of storing the extra leaves).

The slides were totally routine, 3 inches high, each section about an inch thick, but SIX sections on each side. Osborne Wood Products is great - they even put a slight camber in slides for 4 leg tables, so the center rises to compensate for the sag. For pedestal tables the camber is reversed, where the ends rise to compensate for sag. I didn't weigh the slides, but carrying one was all I could handle - probably 30 or more pounds for each side.

The extra legs were simple rectangles with a hinge that locks when the leg is up, and locks in the down position. I used the legs during construction to work on each half of the table - This is the progress picture for the client where you can see the center legs (looks like only one, since they were next to each other.)

RedmonTableS3.jpg


You can also see more of the patching necessary in the mesquite, on the left front leg in the picture, on the edge, and on the leaves.

The challenge was putting the pins in the leaves - even though I made a jig to predrill for the pins, still many had to be plugged and redrilled to fit. All that had to be done in the living room with the table set up. I only had room to work on one leaf at a time, with the sofas and recliners moved back to make room for the table.
 
A beautiful piece. Love the story about the challenge to assemble and deliver. There are those pieces we didn't charge enough for no matter how much it was, hope it wasn't quite that bad :). I enjoy making pieces for folks with larger scale homes. Probably because it is so different than my own home.

On my web site, www.plesums.com/wood/livingroom/diningtable.html I quote the price of another like it as "priceless" since my marriage, my shop, and my body could not do it again. But I did suggest I could build tables of other sizes!

After it was assembled and the pins fit, I then disassembled it, so it could fit in my Odyssey for delivery, and then reassembled it at the client's home. I don't think he realized just how big it would be - he had put out a blanket to put the tops on for assembly (reinstalling the slides), and the blanket would only hold one half of the table. (I use movers blankets, so I was able to rescue him).
 
well done charlie, and i am in the looks good with opposite grain direction, so did you do the inlay? and how did you go about it?


I had a friend with a CNC machine carve the letter (for $50 rather than risking the leaf with a hand router). I then mixed synthetic turquoise fine granules with epoxy, and filled the inlay like any other epoxy patch. Well, almost. He wanted some sparkle to it, so fine silver glitter was added to the epoxy (not enough, since it settled to the bottom of the inlay). And he wanted some larger "stones" so I manually pushed the chunks into the wet epoxy. When it had cured, I could just plane and sand it flush, since it was synthetic.

I used Inlace synthetic materials (and metal dust), from Turtle Feathers, the largest Inlace distributor. www.turtlefeathers.net
 
Last edited:
I was looking at tht also, but there really isn't any piece on that table over 4 feet long?

Mesquite boards over 4 feet long jump in price - you are right, Allen, that all the boards were 4 feet or less, which is why I could deliver it in the Odyssey. The Osborne table slide was also 4 feet long fully collapsed (I looked it up, since I would have guessed 5 or more feet). Mesquite is very heavy wood, so by the time you have a 23 inch wide leaf with 2x2 inch breadboard ends and a 4 inch apron, even one leaf is a full load for a normal person - in practice, two people install each leaf.
 
one more question, with that heavy stuff, when gluing up boards, do you use regular wood glue, or some type of epoxy?

I wonder when they pull table apart, the sheer weight of it, how do they keep it from scratching floors since theres no way they are able to lift the ends slightly to pull apart.
 
one more question, with that heavy stuff, when gluing up boards, do you use regular wood glue, or some type of epoxy?

I wonder when they pull table apart, the sheer weight of it, how do they keep it from scratching floors since theres no way they are able to lift the ends slightly to pull apart.

Brandon Berdoll, of Berdoll Sawmill and Furniture (www.berdollsawmill.com) recommended Titebond or equivalent. I happen to have a gallon of Borden's carpenter glue in the shop, similar to Original Titebond, so that is what I used. It appears to have been more than amply strong. There is over a quart of epoxy filling the cracks and knots. Once the epoxy goes in, it flows into the cracks (and leaks out the other side if you don't put masking tape on the other side of through-cracks), which makes a fragile board quite strong. I felt like a dentist picking at cracks and knots, before filling with epoxy.

While I was attaching the slides at the customer's house, he was installing felt pads on the bottom of the legs. You are right, that one does not casually lift an end of the table!

Incidentally, if you go to Brandon's web site, note the cross-section slabs he has for coffee table tops. He is the only person I have seen able to dry them without getting radial cracks from the edge to the pith. And Brandon is strong enough to move a 5 foot diameter disc, 3-5 inches thick, by himself.
 
Great piece Charlie, I didn't know that you could buy mesquite wood in US, I thought it didn't have much comercial value. Definitely one cannot buy it here.
 
Top