Dining/Game Table - #4 Foot Blocking, Glue-up & a Problem

As I had all the legs temporarily clamped up I thought I would take some scrap plywood and see what the banding would look like.  When I cut the banding according to the dimensions on the drawing they looked to be in proper proportion but not quite the right scale (left leg).  Cutting a second set slightly larger (right leg) seemed to be more in scale.  As I said early on the final piece probably would deviate slightly from the original drawing and this is the first instance.

Mock-up of Different Banding Widths

The leg is hollow and I am going to add a ¾” thick piece of plywood at the bottom end for two reasons.  First it should help to reinforce the leg and second it will give me a place to mount the glides I plan on installing.  To provide support for it I am adding some plywood blocking inside.  Here is the setup I put together so I would not have to measure everything.  First, I clamped a straight piece to the bench edge, then used a scrap piece of plywood the same thickness at the base to get the proper setback for the blocking.  The blocking that gets attached to the rabbited pieces is slightly narrower than the inside face so that’s easy to locate, just center, glue and nail in place. 

 

Jig to Install Blocking in Legs

The filler pieces need room for the rabbit lip and the blocking on the rabbited pieces.  To set them correctly I cut a spacer and used it to get them in the right place.  Taking a little time to make a spacer like this sure speeds things up and helps prevent miss-alignment do to measuring errors.

Spacer for Setting Blocking

Here are the legs pieces with the blocking installed and a closer view of how three sides will look assembled with the bottom in place.

 

Left - Ready to Assemble, Right - Test of Fit

First Leg Glued & Clamped

Now it was time to glue up the first leg.  I applied glue to the rabbits, put the four pieces together making sure they are in the right order.  I don’t want to end up with three left legs and one right one.  From there I put on an armload of clamps and let it cure.

Normally I clean up any excess glue squeeze-out, check the joints, and let the glue cure.  This time I tried something a little different.  I left the glue squeeze-out until it was rubbery then cut it off with a sharp chisel.  It did not work out as well as I had hoped.  Yes, the glue came off easily but because the bead of glue had squeezed out of the joint I could not see to check on how tight the glue joints were.  Most of them came out just fine but in a few places they were not completely closed up negating all the work done to assure they would be tight as could be.  To say I was not happy is a big understatement.  All I know for sure is that I am NOT going to do the glue up on the rest of the legs that way.

#@!**& Gap in Leg Joint

The next leg I glued up the way I usually do cleaning the glue off right after clamping.  Also, this time while I was at it I added a few more clamps.  The result was much better – no gaps :)

2nd Leg Glue-up 

To fix the gap if this were one of my typical (unstained) projects I would mix a little of the sawdust with my finish (lacquer) then fill the gap and once the whole piece is sprayed with finish the gap would disappear.  However, because this piece is going to get a rather dark stain that won’t work.  This left me with two options, try and use some stainable filler or wait until the project is completely done and use a color matched filler. 

Saw Kerf for Filler Test

The possibility of finding a color matched filler for a custom made stain mix did not seem likely.  Also, the gap will be right at the point where the round over that goes on the leg ends and I would like to have that edge backed up by something solid.  That said, I have never used stainable filler and did not know how well it worked.  A trip to the local big box store provided a couple different options.  After reading the labels I decided to go with one whose ingredients seemed to provide for some ability to absorb stain.

The only way to know how well it would work would be to do some testing.  I started by taking cutoffs from the legs then using a fine back saw cut a narrow kerf to represent the gap.  Even using a thin back saw the test cut is quite a bit wider than the gap in the leg. 

I finally decided to test three different materials.  First is the stainable filler, second a glue/oak sawdust mix and last a water based putty I had.  I applied the stainable filler per instructions using a putty knife.  The glue/sawdust was next.  For it I mixed some thinned yellow glue with oak sawdust and applied it with the putty knife also.  The water putty was last and I simply filled the kerf using my finger.  After curing and sanding the stainable filler was a light tan as was the water based putty.  However, the glue/oak mix was black.   At first it did not register why but then I remembered that when you have a water based glue as I did and oak and an iron material like a putty knife (or clamp) the tannin in the oak reacts with the iron resulting in a black stain.  Mystery solved so I redid the test using a piece of oak to mix the glue/sawdust and pack it in the kerf.  When it dried it came out fine.  Applying stain and a quick shellac finish to each piece gave me a representative example of how they would look.  The results surprised me as I had thought that each of the samples would take the stain differently but in this instance that was not the case.  They all look to be just about the same.  The stain I am using is really a dye with alcohol as a carrier.  Perhaps if I had used a water based or petroleum based stain the results would be different.  I did one additional test before I decided which to use.  I put a small lump of the filler and some of the putty out to dry then did a crush test to see which help up better.  The water based putty was my choice as it was hard but not brittle which should help as the wood changes size with the humidity changes.

Stainable Filler & Water Putty Test Samples

Next Up – Filler Strips, Ripping Leg Banding & Trim