Michigan Chocolate Table

[glenn bradley]

I got a piece of Michigan Chocolate a little over 3 years ago. It showed up ready to work but has been against the wall in the shop where I can study it ever since. Here it is after I moved it over to the bench.

After much percolation I have finally decided that it is a "hallway table" that will go along one wall in the new master bedroom. Hallway Table or Sofa Table just describes the form. It will actually stand along a wall in the bedroom. One of these has been on my bucket list so I get to kill two birds with one stone.

I have gotten better about not hurting myself because I can't remember I'm 70 years old. My son in law swung by on the way home from work and helped me schlep it up onto a work table. I started whacking away at the bark with a mallet and beater-chisel.





Then I pulled out a shave and continued.

It is amazing how well tools do at the jobs for which they are intended.

 

[glenn bradley]

Debarking this thing is kicking my behind. The general idea is something like this.



I don't know who's this is but it is one of a dozen or so tables that I have looked at for ideas. Mine will hopefully be a single piece top, not a glue up. It will depend on how the layout progresses. I have a check at one end of the slab. I am hoping to do the layout so that I cut along that line. If not i will lay in a bow-tie. So many of these decisions (for me) require standing around with a cup of coffee and staring at things.

 

[glenn bradley]

Before I forget . . . love the fact that I added a hose and gate drop for occasional use. Also glad I save all those random pieces of Velcro.

I was doing a lot of hand work and making pretty slow progress.

I am surprised sometimes with all the tools I have that I will sometimes find myself stalled for lack of a tool. I don't normally work on slabs so my tools for those are a bit thin. I had removed much of the bark with a mallet and chisel followed up with an angle grinder and an Arbortech Turbo-plane. After that a shave. The Turboplane left a pretty rough surface probably due in the most part to my inexperience.

At any rate I was about to head off to the tool store for a flap-wheel sander to help smooth things out when I remembered . . . About 20-odd years ago my daughter bought me a Dragster belt sander. Despite being a B&D product these things got rave reviews and I asked for one for Christmas.

I was able to finish up the last 4 feet of edge in less time than the first 2 feet took me. Merry Christmas.



The profile will undoubtedly change as the piece comes together but I wanted to have a solid starting point since I am kind of doing this by the seat of my pants.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

I had (and finally wore out) one of the B&D Dragsters about 20 years ago. New out of the box it sounded like the bearings were screaming for their lives, but that thing leveled out a boatload of cutting boards. The low profile made it easy to control and the small front wheel made for a larger platen. I replaced it with Porter-Cable 352VS that's a lot harder to control and get an even finish. I eventually found another Dragster and have it in the tool stash.

 

[Dave Hawksford]

Thats going to look great. We've finished a few live edge tables lately. Lovethelook.

 

[glenn bradley]

After a quick consult with the client (SWMBO) the layout was finalized. The top will come from the left side and the shelf from the right.

I used a scribe tool (Fast Cap's Accuscribe) with a piece of chalk in place of the usual pencil. This let's me follow the natural edge of the material without me getting too "artsy" in the process. My original artificial edges proposed to the client were not accepted.

My tracksaw (or my Porter Cable Mag-saw for that matter) will not make it all the way through the slab so I cut from one side . . .

. . .use a handsaw to cut all the way trough at each end and then use those kerfs as markers to lay the track to allow me to cut from the opposite side.

I can't believe that worked. We get to babysit the new grandson while the other grandkids and their parents go to a Truck Rally so I need to clean up the shop a bit and hop through a shower. I'll get some more time in tonight or tomorrow.

 

[glenn bradley]

Yet another shout out to the Shinto Rasp. They come in a 200mm and 250mm length as well as a sort of "plane" configuration with an additional handle. I have never found the "plane" format all that useful but it seemed like a good idea at the time. At any rate, inexpensive, double sided and really handy.

I keep a couple of my work surfaces in the shop level with Mother Earth.

This makes them handy as reference surfaces when doing odd or awkward things.

The "jig saw as cut off saw" steps in.

I have not used the sled in a while so I give it a quick bit of wax.

I level the planer sled and then level the material on it. This lets me remove as little material as I have to.

I use the adjustable height roller tables as infeed and outfeed support.

I think this material is going to look pretty good.



Can't wait for the finish to hit it.

 

[glenn bradley]

Should have mentioned . . . I take a rough measurement of the greatest height so I can set the planer bed quickly.

In this case starting at 5-1/8" including the sled.

The irregularities of rough sawn slabs cause the thickness to eventually normalize.

Top and shelf both done planer-wise.

Time to joint the wall-side edge and form the "show" edge.

 

[glenn bradley]

I have a small square that I keep on the jointer. This lets me quickly confirm that things are where they should be when I reposition the fence. I frequently move the fence in and out depending on material width. This keeps me from wearing one spot on the cutterhead.

The square happens to have a hole in it so is stashed on this protruding bolt head and stays secure.

There is a bit of what may be wind shake damage. I could just rip another 1/4" off of the top slab but I thought I would try to save it. I can always rip it off later if things don't work out. I use some epoxy . . .

. . . and some CA once the epoxy has set overnight.

I have probably shown this doo-dad before. It is just a piece of poplar scrap with a couple of notches cut to straddle the twin vise screws.

The round hole is just for hanging it on the wall.

This keeps your material from touching the lube on the vise screws.

Ta-da!

The spoke shave is your friend on these irregular curved edges.

This is the natural edge curve but I may want to smooth it out a bit more for appearances sake.

 

[glenn bradley]

OK, a little weak on this post. I wanted to mention that I keep a can with a block of paraffin in it to wipe the soles of my planes with while using. In the same can I keep an old piece of t-shirt that I dribble with some 3-in-1 oil. I use this to wipe down my hand tools every so often.

This has kept them in fine, rust free condition for decades.

I realized that if I tried to make the table base by the seat of my pants I was going to end up in trouble. So, I did a quick Sketch Up to give me some guidelines for dimensions.

I want to keep the base really simple to allow the slabs to be "on display".

The boss and I decided to make the base a bit darker than the slabs so that it will visually fade to the background. Walnut comes in shades of everything from light gray to dark brown. I selected a couple of pieces of darker material from the racks so we will see how it goes. I thought I would make a little more progress today than I have but . . . I have been spirited away to make some of my famous "Sloppy Joes" sandwiches for dinner. More tomorrow.

 

[glenn bradley]

I cut the shelf to final dimension.

I had an on-the-fly design change. I was just going to rest the shelf on cleats but decided that a captured leg/shelf joint looked cooler.

I'm sure I have beat this horse to death . . . these Husky tables go low enough for jointer infeed/outfeed and high enough for bandsaw infeed/outfeed. Love these silly things.

Face jointed and planed to thickness.

One great reason for jointing and then planing is you have two parallel reference faces. This means you can always edge-joint downhill.

Measure twice, cut once doesn't always apply to saw cuts. I check intermittently while milling to make sure things have not wandered off track.

Now that the blanks are jointed, planed and edge jointed it is off to the tablesaw to cut the blanks out.

Rinse and repeat.

 

[glenn bradley]

All ZCI's have a wear factor. This is not necessarily due to blade fluctuation but rather due to the abrasive nature of the spoil passing through the slot. They are a wear-part like brakes on a car. Sooner or later you have to replace them. When I want to use the saw kerf as an alignment tool but am not yet ready to replace the ZCI I stick a bit of tape over the slot.

Then I cut through it. I now know right where the blade is going to pass.

I cut the base parts to final length. I tend to mark things so I can quickly orient them if that happens to be the best look. There are definitely times when flipping or rotating a part gives me a better look. I just like to know where I am starting from . . . such a geek.

I bought this set of collars back when I lived in Silly-Cone-Valley. They were a bargain "Woodcraft" brand but have held up for a couple of decades so who am I to wonder?

These "Spring Lock Washers" are great for template collars. I have not had a template come loose during use since I started using them oh-so-long-ago. They are available various places but Peachtree has a good price on them still.

I wrote the template collar, bit size, and depth setting on the Darrell Peart jig and am glad I did. I haven't used it in so long I never would have remembered. Anyway I install the bit and collar, set the depth. The camera seems to have lit up the whole display but, trust me it is .88".

Here's the cut on a piece of scrap just to make sure I still remember how to use this thing.

And with a swipe or two of sandpaper it looks like so.

The actual design element will be closer to the floor than the test piece. I wonder if I will get that far today?

 

[Darren Wright]

Just catching up and really appreciate all the great tips, and links. This is looking really good!

 

[glenn bradley]

Thanks to all. One of the reasons that I document this stuff is to keep me in motion. Well, that and the fact that I just run my mouth too much . I find that if I do a journal I stay motivated and keep moving forward. I remember a sideboard project that took about 2 months.

Compared to the headboard / pier group that took me about 6 months.

I'm not in a hurry but some projects seem to take a really long time

At any rate . . . hope to keep this one moving along. LOML is getting impatient for her new vanity.

 

[glenn bradley]

Not intended to be a Domino tutorial but, we're here so what the heck? I wanted some 5mm dominoes that were longer than what I had so I quickly made some from scrap in the burn pile.

Layout is typical for a floating tenon regardless of how the mortise and tenon are made.

The beauty of the Lee Valley Joinery table is that once you have your layout on one piece, you don't have to mark or measure for identical pieces. The stops and fence do the work.

The "offset registration gauge" (talk about expensive words) lets you reverse the stop precisly for things like miters and double tenons. Double tenons in my case.

Reverse the stop and position it with the offset doo-hicky.

Cut your opposing mortise.

Ta-da!

Slip in the floating tenons and you end up here.

A few more to go.

 

[glenn bradley]

My flow kind of got disrupted yesterday so I am trying to get my rhythm back .

You can really appreciate the difference between a 5" and a 6" ROS on larger surfaces.

The dust collection on this relatively inexpensive Ridgid is pretty impressive. Even after sanding both slabs my particle counter is well within the safe range.

I need to cut the notches for the legs. I use a magnetic stop and a stand off block at the bandsaw.

Since it is cross-grain I will probably eliminate the rest of this waste with a jig saw

and then clean up with a chisel as opposed to just chopping it all out with a chisel.

 

[glenn bradley]

I was able to squeeze in a little this morning. There are a lot of ways to do this on thick material. I chose a jig saw to remove the bulk of the waste.

Then I chewed up the leftovers a bit. You can see that I also cut a little notch to register the chisel to later. I know a lot of folks do this for dovetails . . . same function.

I bring the slab to a work surface and set it on a bench hook. I made this one out of an old kitchen pullout cutting board from a kitchen remodel a few houses ago. Basically it just lets me chop all the way through the material and into the supporting structure.

Here you get the general idea.

We are having visitors today so I will probably not get back to this till tomorrow.

 

[Jonathan Shively]

Holy cow Glenn, beautiful work (as usual) great tutorial and now I feel the need to take a nap!

 

[glenn bradley]

Hoo-boy! I was so eager to get back to this project I may have been a little over eager. I was chiseling out the leg recesses for the lower shelf. I was so focused on chiseling to the line that I moved out over an area of unsupported material near the natural edge of the slab.

Yep, I blew right through it . . . nice big blowout. As soon as I tapped the chisel and got almost zero resistance I realized what I had done. The location is on the underside of the lower shelf and behind the leg so Lady Luck was with me. Despite the fact that the area could be hot pink in color and still not be seen I do need to structurally repair the area.

I carefully fan out the "splattered" area and drizzle epoxy into the wound. The area is part of the natural curve of the natural edge. Fortunately one of my "uneven clamping cauls" fit the area pretty well. I wrapped some packing tape on the arc and used the semicircle as a caul to force the "splatter" back into the slab.

Once mostly cured I pull the block and peel the tape. I will let this cure for a while more and then finish up this last notch with a rasp. I don't want to go banging against the repaired area with a chisel and mallet no matter how well supported.

On the upside, the other three notches came out great.



Meanwhile the leg/stand/base(?) has plenty of effort left before I start putting things together.

 

[glenn bradley]

This is so anticlimactic

. Had I known the repair was going to go so well I would have gotten a picture of the "before" condition.



The area under my finger looked like a Bugs Bunny 'El Exlodo' cigar scene

.



The fanning out of the damage allowed me to drizzle epoxy in. The various pieces of tape to keep things contained and tape-wrapped clamping cauls let me push everything back in place. I am considering myself very lucky on this one