Dining/Game Table - #3 Finish Milling Major Leg Pieces & Test Fits

The table legs are longer than 24” which is the longer than my longest precision metal ruler so I need to use something else.  The typical tape measure comes to mind as the first choice but I do not use them except for rough layout or where being a little off is not a problem.  In an ideal world the hook at the end of the tape would slide back and forth equal to its thickness giving the same measurement regardless if the tape is hooked over the end of a board or up against a flat surface.  My tapes don’t live in an ideal world and the result is they give a slightly different measurement depending on how the end hook is used.  Here you can see that there is about 1/32” difference.  Not a lot and most of the time it would not matter but here where I am trying to get the table legs and rails to match up perfectly I don’t know which to believe when I am setting my stop block on the chop saw to length.

Metal Tape Measuring Difference

What I do use is an old school wooden folding ruler.

 

Wooden Folding Ruler

Next up is to cut the long and short leg sections that have the rabbits.  I have a “T” track inset in my workbench that allows me to clamp a stop block in place.  That way I can very carefully set it up once and then cut pieces all day the exact same length.

 

Sliding Compound Miter Saw & Stop Block

With the wide set of leg pieces all cut to finished size I could lay out the rabbits on each side.  Here is the L1-S (Leg1-Short) piece marked up.  The rabbits are marked out pretty close but not exact.  They are a really a general guide to help me make sure I cut in the right place rather than an exact cut line.  I will use a dial caliper and the pieces that go in the rabbit to get a precise fit.

Leg with Rabbits Marked Out

Here are the wide pieces with some of the rabbit layout work done.

Pieces to be Rabbited

When I finished marking up all the pieces I swapped out the rip blade on the table saw and set up the stack dado blade.  The rabbit I am going to cut is a little over ¾” wide and about 9/16” deep.  I suppose I could cut it in one pass but that’s turning a lot of oak into sawdust at once.  I decided to take a little strain off the saw and me and do it in 2 main passes with a final cleanup cut.  A little calculation shows that by the time I get done cutting the rabbits I will have converted over 370 cubic inches of oak into sawdust.  Odds are I will have to empty the table saw dust collector during the process.  The dado stack set I am using has three 1/8” thick blades and one 3/32” thick.  That gives me a total slightly over half the entire cut so I have a little overlap.  This is my setup, note the yellow feather board beyond the cut.  It applies just a little pressure on the board to keep it snug against the rip fence.  I make two passes on each cut, the first hogs out 99% of the material and the second takes care of any variation during cutting so I end up with a clean, straight, flat bottom cut.

 

Table Saw Setup for Cutting Rabbits with Dado

Adjusting the fence to take another cut then running all eight pieces through the saw gets me very close to the final depth as confirmed by a test fit.

Second Cut & Test Fit

Moving the fence once more to make the final light cut gives me the fit I am looking for.  When clamped up tight it’s just a couple thousands too deep as you can see when you get really close.

Tiny Lip on Cut Rabbit

Having that little lip means I can lightly sand the overage and get a perfectly smooth joint for routing a round over on the edge later on.  My goal is to have the leg look like it’s made out of a solid piece of oak.  That’s why I am taking so much time to match the grain and precisely cut the joints.

Final Test Fit

Now it’s time to rip the rest of the pieces that make up the center column in the leg.  They need to be cut so that when installed the column is a square.  I want all corners to be exactly 90 degrees and the sides as close to being equal width as I can.   This is so when the time comes to install the two bands of mitered trim wrapping the leg the pieces should be the same or very close in length.  Time spent now will pay off in not spending lots of time individually cutting and mitering all 32 of those trim pieces.  With the inset pieces cut to size I can do a test assembly to see how all the careful material selection, layout and cutting come together.  Here are photos of the bottom part of the leg along with a close-up of it.  As you can see the joints are pretty unobtrusive.

Dry Fit of Leg

Last step here is to cut the inset pieces to length.  It’s the same process as before; squaring one end, measuring, setting a stop block and making the cuts, with one exception.  Before I decide which end to cut off I have to check for grain flow and how it matches up with the adjacent pieces.  This is how the four leg parts look all done and ready for the next step.

Leg Pieces Ordered for Grain Flow

I have been looking at various biscuit joiners for when I do the top and saw this tag at the local Home Depot regarding a Ryobi Biscuit Joiner.  Take a look at the second box from the left (circled in red).  It says 10,000 Amps.  I got a real laugh out of that since it’s about 50 times the power capacity of the entire house.  I believe the first number of 6.0 Amps is right and the 10,000 should be RPM’s.  Still it was funny, I guess I am easily amused.

Funny Home Depot Biscuit Joiner Sticker

Next Up – Leg Foot Blocking, Glue-up & a Problem

Dining/Game Table - #2 Exploded View, Wood Selection, Layout & Initial Milling

One thing I frequently do on a project is generate an exploded view.  That way I can see all of the parts and how they go together.  This view is accurate as of now but I have two different ways for the playing surface structural support to be constructed and have not made up my mind as to which way I am going yet.

Exploded Table & Leg

At  long last I could start actual construction, some 9 months after the project was first discussed.  Going into my stack of oak I sorted through the boards to select the ones for the legs.   I wanted to legs to have similar grain and the wood in each leg to match as close as I could.  To get that level of continuity I decided to make each leg out of a single board.  Here are the four boards I selected plus one short in case I run into a problem.

 

Selected Oak Leg Boards

Moisture Meter

As  all the boards have been sitting stickered in my storage room for months I assumed that they would be dry but you know what happens when one assumes something.  Just to make sure I checked them with a moisture meter and found that one registered 5% but most of them registered 0%.  At first I thought the meter had broken or the battery was bad.  However, after checking the instructions I found the meter range is from 5% to 50%.  It is so dry here that most of the boards have dried out to less than 5% moisture content.

With the boards selected and the moisture content checked I could start laying out my rough cuts.  The oak lumber I bought was surfaced on the two wide faces and had one edge ripped straight.  Well, more or less straight but more on that later.  Neither end was trimmed and as such all had cracks of varying severity.  I had a few ends like this one that impacted my layout. 

 

Cracks in Untrimmed Oak Board Edge

Here is a stack of rough cut pieces for one of the legs.  Note how similar the grain and color is between the pieces.  To make sure I could keep track of which piece goes to which leg as the milling progressed I labeled the ends.  L1-S stands for Leg 1, Short and L1-L stands for Leg 1, Long. 

 

Leg 1 Central Column Pieces

After I cut all the pieces that will make up the structural part of the legs I ran them through the thickness sander.  This will do two things, first give me a constant thickness to the pieces.  As they come from the mill they are fairly close but not close enough.  More than a precise thickness I need a consistent thickness.  There are going to be rabbits cut into the edges of two pieces that will receive the other two legs parts to make the leg center section.  As long as everything is a consistent thickness I can cut the rabbit to match.  If the pieces are different thickness then some will fit and some will not.  The second reason is to get rid of the planer scallops from the mill.  Here you can see the peaks and valleys the planer left.

Planer Scalloping

With the boards at a consistent thickness I could move on to getting a straight edge.  As I said before the boards from the mill had one edge ripped straight.  Some were pretty good and some not so straight.  The ones with minor imperfections I could clean up on the table saw but the ones that were curved or otherwise too far from being straight needed other help.  If I had a long bed jointer I could use that but I don’t.  If I had a long jointer plane I could use it to get a straight edge but I don’t.  In situations like this I clamp the board in a jig that holds it in place so a router can cut a straight edge.  You can just see the edge of the oak to be cut sandwiched in the jig.

Oak Board Ready For Edge to be Trimmed

The board is set so that a little bit extends beyond the cutting plane of the router all along the board’s edge.  The amount sticking out varies depending on how un-straight the board is.  Here I marked the face of the board with a pencil so you can see how much I am taking off.

Pencil Line Showing Cutting Plane

A cut is then made using a router with a solid carbide spiral bit guided by the jig’s straight steel tube to give me the straight edge.  A pencil line drawn down the board’s edge so after the cut I can verify that the full edge has been trimmed.

Router Ready to True up  Board's Edge

This particular board had such a curve in it that I had to take two passes with the router to get a straight edge.  Here is the finished piece; clean, straight and true.  If the board is really, really out of whack or I am trying to get a straight grained piece out of a board whose grain runs diagonally I will mark a straight line and cut close to the line using a bandsaw.

Straight Edge on Board

With one straight edge I labeled each piece showing it’s final width, which face would be exposed or hidden, if I needed to trim one or both sides plus any other needed notes.

Cutting Information

This piece had a crack in one end so the note here lets me know that I need take the majority off this end when cutting to length.

Cutting Information

Pitch on Saw Blade & Cleaned up

Now I was ready to rip the wider pieces to width.  The narrow ones will be cut later once I am finished with the rabbits and I get the final dimension.  Well I was almost ready, when I checked my saw blade it needed a little maintenance.  Before starting this project, I had built a piece out of cedar and the pitch/resin had built up on the blade’s carbide cutting tips.  I spent a few minutes with an oak scrap popping them off so I had a clean cutting edge.

With a clean blade I could start ripping the boards to width.  Here is my setup.  The boards to be cut are to the right of the saw’s fence with the edge to be cut towards the saw blade.  Cut boards are to the right of the ruler.  The process of cutting to width is not a single pass.  Remember from above some of the boards needed to be cut on both sides to remove defects.  For those sequence is to make one pass a little wide then a second light cut to clean up.  For all the pieces I will cut slightly wider than the final dimension then make light pass to give me the final width.

Lumber Arrangement for Ripping

Next Up – Finish Milling Major Leg Pieces & Test Fits

Dining/Game Table - #1 The Start

This project has had a long gestation period, longer than just about anything I have built.  Many, many months ago while visiting my son he mentioned that his dining room table was in sad shape and he had been looking at replacing it with a nice combination game/dining room table.   Later that year he sent me a couple of links that to places that sold them and asked my opinion.   Toward the end of the year when I asked him what he would like for Christmas he said he really did not need anything but mentioned the game/dining room table as something on his wish list.

At that time, I really had nothing in the que for projects in the shop and decided to see what I could come up with as a design.  If I could generate a good design, then we would talk about building.

As you might guess we did get a good design and I agreed to build the piece.  However, rather than jumping into the construction of this project I am going to take some time to go through the design process.  I started by sending my son a lot of different photos of various styles.  These are not all but give an idea of span of styles we looked at.

Through discussion of what he liked and wanted in the piece we narrowed it down to four general styles.   A dining surface and a hidden gaming table below drove the general dimensions.  That left the legs and top apron as areas that were open for variations.  I did four drawings with different leg styles all set up as a gaming table.  One of the early criteria was to have thin pull out trays as a place to hold a drink, cards, chips, playing pieces and the like.  Here are the renderings with the trays closed.

Here they are with the trays pulled out. Additional discussion narrowed it down to one style, the square leg with some trim.  As we had not made any decision on what to make the table out of I had shown Oak as the primary wood with a lighter color trim such as curly maple. 

There are two other constraints in this project.  One was that the top needed to protect the game surface below from spills when it was in place and second, for delivery, the whole piece needs to be able to be broken down to fit inside our 2007 Toyota Camry.  Nothing like adding a little bit extra to the design parameters.  The need to have a top that would protect the game surface, would be removable and not weigh a ton was probably the hardest problem to resolve.  The typical solution of individual boards dropped into an inset just did not meet the requirements.  What I finally came up with is a top that overlays the table and is in two pieces.  It uses a notch in the table to hold it in place, alignment pins where the two pieces meet plus a gasket.  The overlay will allow spills to sheet off the top and the gasket will prevent or at least slow down a spill migrating through to the game surface.  At least that’s the plan.  Here is what the table looked like at this point.  By now the table material had morphed into a darker oak with oak trim.  The exact stain mix was still to be determined.

This point in the design coincided with the build of the Photo Club Cabinet and I felt we had a workable plan so I decided to take the hour’s drive to the hardwood supplier and get material for both projects.  Here is the part breakdown for the table as it was at that time.

Additional discussion and some experimentation of the size of the game playing surface needed brought about a concern regarding being able to reach across the tray and the gaming surface.  The initial option was to eliminate the tray leaving only the cup holders.

More study on the size of the playing surface produced two more changes.  First was to eliminate any pull out tray including the cup holders.  Second was to change the playing surface width to a true 42” which added about 8” to the width.  There were some other small changes like the addition of a chamfer on the legs to get rid of the sharp edge and structural changes to allow everything to fit in the car for transportation.  Here is a rendering before adding the 8” in width and after.

Part way through the design process my son made the decision to get new dining chairs so we decided to stop the stain color discussions until he had received them.  We could then work toward a final stain mix.  Once he had the chairs I started mixing various dyes to come up with a recipe that would either match or compliment the chairs.  Fortunately, the store where he bought the chairs has an outlet here that had the same chair.  Some 10 or 12 iterations later I came up with a couple of recipes that looked to be really close.  I cut some thin oak sample pieces, applied stain, sprayed on three coats of lacquer and mailed them off so he could compare them to the actual chairs.   I also sent a rendering that had the stain color matched pretty close to the samples.  This sure would be easier if we did not live a thousand miles apart.  One caveat, the photos of the samples here are pretty close in color to what I sent but don’t match up exactly.  In addition, different monitors will show colors different, so please keep that in mind as you look at them. 

By  now I felt the stain needed just some minor tweaking to get a match so turned my attention to a final review of the table itself.  While doing that I noticed a disconnect in edge treatment.  While working on the original design of the legs and trim I clipped the edges at a 45-degree angle to make them a little friendlier to legs and other body parts when bumping into them.  For the dining top and playing rail I softened the edges with radius.  That meant I had two conflicting edge treatments.  After some discussion we decided to go with a radius to soften the edges.  Subsequent to this drawing I also radiused the trim pieces.

You know how a manufacture says “actual pieces may vary in color” well that’s what happened when my son got the samples and compared them against his chairs.  The sample that matched the chair here did not match the chairs at his house.  After more discussion on the difference I generated a couple more samples and ended up going the wrong direction in correction.  More discussion and a video call created 3 more samples plus an option for trim color.  One of these proved to be a color match but a little too light.  For now, I will call it good but do another darker sample set using cutoffs from the actual table material.

 As the piece had gone through a lot of iterations I generated a plan with critical dimensions for a final check before starting.  Tweaks now are easy to do compared to when it shows up for installation, think of the boat built in the basement that won’t fit out the door.

Of  course there were some small edits or at least they sound like small edits.  Most driven by the new chairs.  They have slightly different dimensions than his old ones so the piece was lengthened by 3/4”, the legs were made ½” narrower and their height was reduced by 1¾”.  I know it does not sound like much but when I got done there only a few, make that very few pieces that did not change in size.

If  you carefully look at the playing surface it changed from blue to red.  The red goes better with the new chairs and the rest of the room.  As I did some searching for the actual playing surface I found that we had pretty much two choices.  Solid colors and a print of the card suits repeated in a ¾” block.  However, there are some places that will print whatever graphic you provide them with onto the surface.  I sent him a couple of choices to think about.  One a simple two color pattern and one a little more exotic.

Next Up – Exploded View, Wood Selection, Layout & Initial Milling