Dining/Game Table - #21 Final Sanding, Dent Removal & Divot Repair

Ah yes, sanding one of those necessary evils of woodworking besides I am waiting for the playing surface/pad to be delivered.  Sanding needs to be done well or the final finish will suffer.  As I went along with the build I did rough sanding up through 120 grit so it’s not like I am starting from scratch. 

For this project, I finish sand in reverse order of the build, so first up is the top.   Because the table is made out of Red Oak, an open grain wood that does not show scratches easily, my final sanding grit is 220.  If I had used cherry, maple or some other fine grained wood I would have had to gone to a finer grit to remove all visible scratches.  Procedure is using a pad sander go over all the edges first then the faces and lastly hit the round overs by hand making sure the flat surfaces flow smoothly into the round over.  I also check for any dings that may have happened during the build.  Sure, enough on the underneath side of the first leaf I found some dents. 

Small Dents in Top

Sanding the dents out is not the best way to go as that will leave a depression in the wood.  For dents where no wood is cut or removed a better way is to use steam.  A small dent is just where the wood fibers have been crushed.  Steaming using an iron and a wet cloth re-inflates the crushed fibers and the dent disappears.  Here the dents are gone but the steam also raised the grain around them.

Sanding the area briefly with the pad sander cleans things up and no more dents.

I continued to take the table apart and finish sand until I got to the Inner Rail/Alignment Guide assembly.  In post #13 Fitting Alignment Guides & Building Miter Jig for Top Arm Rail I said that when I was satisfied with the fit I would glue them together.  Well, that’s now and it’s pretty easy take out the screws holding the two pieces together, run a bead of glue, put the two pieces back together using the screws I just took out.  I did have some glue squeeze out but let it set until rubbery then cut it out with a sharp chisel.

Gluing up Inner Rail Assembly

The next assembly to come out was the MDF playing surface support and it’s supporting sub-structure.  I moved it to the workbench so when the playing surface/pad arrives I could fit it and punch all 66 required holes.

MDF Playing Surface Support

Outer  Rail Round Overs

While waiting for the pad I moved on to taking the outer rail and the legs apart.  When I originally assembled the outer rails and the legs I had not rounded the lower edge of the outer rail as I wanted that sharp edge for reference.  Since I no longer needed it for that purpose I could route the round over softening that edge.  Several posts back while working on my back under the table screwing the arm rail on I banged my head on that sharp edge not once but twice and bled all over it.  Just the tables not so subtle way of reminding me not to forget that I still had some work to do there.  The actual routing was easy.  I had one router set up with the 3/16” bit for the outside and another one set up with a 1/8” bit for the inside. 

While I was doing the finish sanding on the arm rails I came across what looked like a minor imperfection on the inside.  Checking it out I found that there was a void and by the time I got all the loose bits cleaned up I had a nice divot.  Not really what I wanted to see.

Cleaned up Cavity on Inside Face of Arm Rail

I could have filled it with wood filler but decided that even though it is on the back side of the rail and hidden I would patch it.  First I changed the bit in the router to a 3/8” straight flat bottom bit and added a fence to guide the router parallel to the edge of the arm rail.  I adjusted the guide so the bit was centered on the divot and made a pass going from one end of it to the other.

Router Set-up for Cavity Clean-up

A second pass just a little deeper gave me a flat bottom and parallel sides for the patch.

Routing Done for Patch

A little work with the wood chisel gives me a nice square hole for the plug.  Using a scrap slightly thicker than the hole I made a plug and was ready to glue it in place.

Plug Ready to be Glued

I put a small amount of glue in the hole, pressed the plug in place, securely clamped it there and left it to cure overnight.  The next day using a scraper I leveled the plug with the rest of the rail, gave it a quick sanding and was done.  If it was at all visible I would have paid more attention to matching the grain.

Completed Patch

This left just the legs and they were nearly done earlier.  A check of them revealed only minimal work to be done.  This completes all the final sanding except for a little bit on the MDF playing surface support and it’s supporting sub-structure that I will not do until after I have fitted the playing surface/pad.   Here is the stack of all the finished sanded parts ready to be stained.  Not that big a pile considering all the work that has gone into the project and good news, it looks like it will fit in the car trunk.

Sanded Table Pieces Ready for Finishing

The same day I completed my finish sanding the playing surface/pad showed up on the doorstep so that will be the next bit of work. 

Next Up – Fitting & Punching the Pad, Scaling up & Testing Stain