Thursday, December 14, 2017

Bistro Table, Part 4: Making the Top-Support Ring

The table will eventually look like this:
Sketchup mockup
The top slats for this table will be supported by a center round piece as well as by a ring that rests on the base.
View from below showing the ring that supports the top slats
Today's post will be about making these two support pieces and will be mostly pictorial.  Lots o' pics!

Started with a full scale drawing of the ring - 23 1/2" outer diameter
Detail view on one component of the 8-piece ring
Originally I thought I might use splines to connect the parts, but I went with integral tenons on one end and mortises on the other end of each piece.
Took dimensions from the drawing, squared up some pieces and marked where things will go
After a couple successful test pieces, ganged up the rest and marked edges together
Transferred angles to faces and then to other edge
Marked to make absolutely certain of no mistakes
Making the tenons
Sawed off the waste end
Marked the tenon extents using a router plane as marking gauge
Sawed the shoulder, which was 3/4" from the end
Split off as much as I could safely do
Pared close to the line
Then used the router with unchanged setting to get exactly to the lines
Cleaned up the shoulders with a sharp chisel
Rinse and repeat for the rest of the pieces
Making the mortises
First, removed the waste
Then carefully squared the end
That's what Daddy likes!  This is important for a good joint.
Before going further, numbered the joints (even though they were fairly interchangeable)
Made a knife nick on the corner 3/4" from end to mark the depth of the mortise,
transferred nick marks to other corner with bevel gauge and squared lines onto the edges in mortise area
Used same router setting as before to mark the mortise
Sawed close to the lines
Left the lines
After chiseling out the waste, pared closer to the lines.
Tested the fit of the tenon, and pared more until the fit was right
Fitting them together

After all eight pieces were done, I tested the fit by assembling two sections of four pieces each.
Two half-rings dry-assembled with tight joint lines
Then carefully fit the halves together to see what kind of adjustments would need to be made.
Left side: gap on the inside
Right side: gap on the inside
This meant I needed to shave a little off every piece and it's easiest to do that on the mortise end.  I freehanded the cut on a shooting board, taking a bit off the outside half of each mortise end.
Probably should have made a special shooting board for this, but this worked
Got a nice fit after only one iteration of this
With the parts dry fit, I marked out the circles and then did the shaping.
Marked the outer circle with large homemade compass
Didn't get pics of the shaping, but it went off easily
After shaping, the joints looked like this on the outside ...
... and this on the inside.  I glued in small off-cuts from the tenons to fill these gaps.
Glued up using a ratchet strap, which pulled the joints together nicely.
Clamps and holdfasts kept the ring from twisting while the glue set.
And there it is.
Not perfectly round, but it doesn't need to be.
As for the circle part in the center of the sub-top, that also went well.
6" x 6" x 5/8" thick blank, squared and marked
Sawed the bulk of waste off
Then used chisel, spokeshave and file to complete the shaping and smoothing.  Came out nice.
I also made a 4" round piece from redwood that will be the center of the top.
Next time: Making the top slats and bringing it all together.

4 comments:

  1. is it just me or you arer taking on, more and more challenging projects ? :-)
    Keep up the good work.

    Bob

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    1. Thanks Bob. I thought this project would be easy, but there are always little details that make it more complicated.

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