Table Tales Part 3

This week I feel I made some real progress on my table. I got end boards glued over the sliding dovetail cleats so they are captured in the table now. This gives me away to fasten to top to the base and still let it move freely, a real problem with using a solid top with this kind of a base. Friday I roughly planed it flat and will finish that up after everything is fastened down. Today I got out my jig saw and cut the excess off of the circle so that later this week when I route it I don’t have all that waste to deal with, this also makes the top easier to deal with. I have been knocking around the idea of banding the top in a contrasting wood but I am not sure yet, I have to studying on a bit, because of the problems of the wood movement.

I am however going to add some art work to center of the table. I plan on doing an inlay of one of two designs I did a while ago I am not sure which one I’ll pick. I used one of them on a drum, no actually I used both on drums I made and painted. Both designs will be challenging and will take me a while, so I plan on putting a sealer coat on the top while I work on the inlays then I will do the finial finishing that way we can use the table.

The table sits well and is just the right size for our small apt and I most admit is better that them cheap ones we looked at, and at this point has only cost us about $4.69 so its certainly been a bargain. When I am done with inlay it will be a one of a kind and original sleepydog along with two dogs that will spend many hours under there hoping for some yummy treats from their well trained humans.

One Mans Trash is Anothers Table Pt2

My table top is coming along nicely, slower than I am use to progressing on a project like this but I’m not complaining I am getting back in touch with why I love woodworking. Normally I would of none a small top like this one in a day or so with some other work squeezed in between the drying time for the glue up. But since I have no shop, and I’m doing the work with hand tools, and some hand held power tools in the living room of my apartment and in the front yard when it’s not raining, it is taking me a bit longer, which is alright with me, I’m enjoying myself.

I really forgot how nice it is to run a sharp plane over a board and hear that crisp sound of iron slicing wood, and the smell, oh the smell of fresh pine filling my nose without the distraction of grease in the air. Yes I am falling in love with woodworking again. Working with hand tools sometimes make me feel like I am a rookie again and you know what? I like that. It makes me have to stop and think before I do things, and plan more than I did when I was working with my machines. I was a good cabinetmaker but it’s a lot like being a grunt in the Army, you build what you’re told, when you’re told, and you get very little opportunity to put anything of yourself into your work. I still loved it though, same with owning my own shop. But now doing work for my wife and myself I can put 100% of me into the piece’s I build and that has me excited.

When I first gave up on the idea of have a working shop again I was more than I little depressed and I wasn’t sure I wanted to even do woodworking anymore, but I kept cleaning and sharpening my tools I even picked up some treasured planes and saws that my wife would show me when we went to the flea market or yard sales. Even us picking up that table base and her gloating me into making a top for her was her way of getting me back on the horse, so to speak. Then she said something to me that really hit home she told me that “an artist and a woodworker is what you are not what you do” that’s when I realized I don’t have to make money with my woodworking to be a woodworker and if in the future I get the chance to have working shop, that will be great, but if I don’t, I still have my wife and daughter, who both have honey do list longer than I have time to complete, and I am sure it will grow as time goes by. Now I just need to decide what’s next in my life, the wife and I are thinking about truck driving, so stay tune.

One Mans Trash is Anothers Table

We were on out driving one day when I see this cast iron table base setting by the side of the road in the garbage and point it out to my wife, and my wife says to me stop! and pick that up. Now that alone cause me to jerk the car to side of the rode so fast I almost caused a wreck, mainly, because she usually deplores my occasionally ventures into dumpster diving even thought I have found some pretty interesting stuff even by her standards. I looked at her and said damn! after 25 years I am rubbing off on you. She looked back at me and said don’t get your hopes up buddy that we’ll rummage thru dumpster together, cause it’s not going to happen, I just think that it will make a nice table and as you know we do need one, so get your ass out there and grab it, then we can talk about what kind of a top I want you to make me!

I did the dutiful husband thing and I jumped out of the car and grab the base. It was a nice find and to be honest I would of picked it up anyway. I loaded it in the back seat of the car, crawled in and off we went with our new treasure. After a few miles I look at her and asked, so do you have something in mind for that piece of crap in the back seat? mocking her loving. Yes, yes I do, she said, I want you to make me a knotty pine top to match the hutch. I said pine, not pine, she said why not pine?

I said because it isn’t the best material to make a table top out of. She said “but it’s what I want”, and then said “my minds made and I counted to three”, quoting the lady on Oh Brother Were Are Thou meaning there was no changing her mind. All I said was “dang gone it you done went and counted to three”, meaning I got the message and pine it would be. After a few more miles she explained “I want a small round table with the edges rounded over, and I would like left a natural color with maybe some kind of inlay in red or something in the top. Just do your thing and make pretty”.

Do my thing? make it pretty? pine, ok I can work with this, I think. It seems when ever I build things for my own home it ends being pine. Some time in the late 80s before all the kitchen manufacture offered pine cabinets the shop I worked in started building pine kitchen cabinets, not because we wanted to work with pine, it can be a pain to work with, but because there was a market for it. We were good at it and build a lot of kitchens. Ever since then pine has seem to follow me as a material that my customers seem to chose even when I try to recommend other choices, even my wife. Lucky for her I just happen to have some 2 x 8 yellow pine under the bed drying out. Don’t ask why that’s another story.

I hand planed the 2 x 8s and glued them together trying to get them as flat as I could. What twist that is in the top I hope to take out with a sliding dovetail cleat. I left the two end boards off and after the cleat is inserted I will glue them on so that the dovetail can’t be seen. The base will be attach to the cleats with four rail bolts and ¼ 20 nuts so the top can be removed. Then with the top attached I will plane it flat and route it into a circle then decide how to make it pretty? Out of all the people I have done work for and no matter how silly she is about my skills my wife is the one person I never want to disappoint.