Well, at the end of the last post I mentioned that a
final decision had been made on the playing surface/pad color and it had been
ordered. I spoke too soon, after a week
we checked and found that the color that had been ordered had been discontinued
and nobody at the company thought to mention that when the order was
placed. To add insult to injury the
second color choice was also discontinued.
After getting an updated color listing the decisions was made to go with
black and the pad ordered again.
For some time, we have been discussing how to lock the
table top in place. At last we decided
to use a pair of removable brass pins.
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| Drawing Showing Brass Pin Location |
After some careful measuring, I located the holes in the
arm rail. The tape makes the center
lines easy to see and can help reduce any chip out around the hole. Typically, I would drill the holes using the
drill press to make sure they are square.
However, the arm rails are screwed down and I am not going to go through
the process to remove them. I marked the
drill bit with tape to set depth and with me keeping one axis square and my wife as
a second set of eyes guiding me we got them done.
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| Drilled Hole in Arm Rail for Brass Pin |
With one hole on either side I was ready to mark the
locations on the top. As careful as I am
about my measuring I doubted I could get the holes perfectly located so the top
would just drop onto the pins. The
solution is a dowel center. They come in
various sizes and all I had to do was pick the ¼” one drop it in the hole then
set the top in place and tap it to mark the center of the holes. If you look just to the right and down a bit
from the hole there is a fine vertical line and a cross mark. Those correspond to the face and a reference
mark on the top. This along with one on
the other side lets me make sure the top is where it needs to be.
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| Dowel Center for Marking Brass Pin Location in Top |
Making the brass pins is next. I am using ¼” brass rod for them. Each pin goes 5/8” into the arm rail and 7/8”
into the top for a 1½” pin. After
cutting a 1½” piece I rounded the ends with a file then using finer and finer
grits of sandpaper finishing it off with steel wool polished them to a
semi-glossy sheen. Putting a ¼” pin in a
¼” hole will work but it’s a snug fit, too snug really. To provide just a little clearance I reamed
the holes out by 1/64”. When I set the
top in place it dropped in just fine.
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| Steps in Making Brass Pins |
In a normal table I would be done with the top but adding
the game playing function below it added some new considerations. Imagine you have an expensive game set up and
the play is continued over a couple of weekends. Through the week, the top is in place and used
a dining table. During a meal, somebody
knocks over a glass of water which runs across the table into the joints and
down onto the game making a mess out of everything. One way to avoid this is to have a one-piece
top with no joints. This is OK except
the top would weigh over a hundred pounds.
Since the top has four leaves and three joints I needed a way to reduce the chance of
the above scenario. My solution is to
fasten a strip of oak to one leaf below the table and have weather-stripping
sealing the joint against its mate. Below is
my test assembly, the weather-stripping shown is hollow and will be under
slight compression for a seal.
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| Mock-up for Leaf Joint Seal |
The oak strip is pretty simple to make. I cut to width, run through thickness sander
to get rid of planer marks and cut the notch on the table saw. I could have set up the dado blade to make
the cut but thought it would take less time to just run it through the saw a
few times. That did leave me with a
series of small ridges at the bottom of the notch. A couple of passes with a shoulder plane
flattened the bottom and cut a sharp corner where the bottom and side of the
notch meet.
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| Shoulder Plane & Finished Dado for Weather-Stripping |
I finish up by cutting them to length, rounding over all
the exposed edges, sanding smooth and drilling the mounting holes. Note the second from right staggered
holes. This is so the pieces only go on
one way.
Last is to screw the strips on. I will not be installing the
weather-stripping until after the finish is applied. Here is a leaf in place.
Next is the applique pieces that go on the legs and
outside rail. These roughed out pieces
have been setting since post #7. In checking them they are in pretty good shape. No twist or cup only a couple had some minor
bowing but they are so thin it will be easy to flatten them when they are applied.
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| Applique Pieces |
Since they are already the finished thickness all I had
to do was check the drawings for size then rip to width and cut to length. The more time intensive part was putting a
round over on all the edges. When I drew
the plan a 1/8” radius was shown. After I
did the first piece it just didn’t look right, the round over was just too
small to read very well. The pieces are
¼” thick so I could try a 3/16” radius.
In a side by side comparison the 3/16” looked a lot better so that’s
what I used.
I started with the small pieces at the top of the
leg. They are only 1 7/8” x 1 5/8” and
because they are small my fingers end up way too close to the bit. To get them away from that bit spinning at
15,000 RPM’s and provide a margin of safety I used the pieces in the setup
below. The big yellow thing is the
gripper, it has a rubberized base to hold on to the piece being routed. The small piece of wood just to it’s right is
a spacer to hold the gripper parallel with the applique blank which is just to the
right of the red router bit. The MDF
board on the far right keeps the blank square and is what I use to push the
blank while it is being routed.
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| Parts Used to Safely Rout Small Pieces |
Here is what it looks like when I am ready to route. The bit is covered and my fingers are a few
inches away from it which makes me a lot more comfortable.
There are 28 individual applique pieces that need routing
and when done here they are stacked up ready for finish sanding.
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| Applique Pieces |
To see what the applique pieces actually looked like I
taped them on where they would go on a corner and am happy with the result.
This finishes up the bulk of the woodworking. I still have lots to do like; finish sanding,
staining, spraying several coats of the lacquer finish, buffing it out and
applying the applique pieces. Then there
is the fitting of the playing surface/pad if it ever arrives, packing
everything in the car for delivery and lastly setting it up.
Next Up – Final Sanding, Dent Removal & Divot Repair
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