Dining Table, Finale

It is finally time to complete the table!

I completed the legs and the top, and now it is time to finish them both.  I wanted to do my best to make the 2 types of oak (red and white) appear to be similar.  There is no better way to do this than to make the finish very dark. 

My friend Josh, over at boundaries in time has done a very nice finish on his dining table that consisted of: Dye, Shellac, Stain, Topcoat. I decided to do the same, but where he thinned out his dye and I will not thin to get a darker color. I went with:

-General Finishes Medium Brown Water Based Dye stain

-Zinnser clear Shellac

-General Finishes Brown Mahogany Wood Stain

-50/25/25 Mineral Spirits + Gloss Polyurethane + Satin Polyurethane (I didn’t have any semi-gloss)

I don’t have any ‘during’ pictures, as I was too mad with how it was turning out. At one point, just after finishing the dye step, I was about to resand the entire top because you could see every brush mark and overlap. but as I added layers, everything evened out and looked better and better.  At the end, it was by far the best finishing job I had done.

Here is the before: 

And here is how it looked after all was said and done.

Assembled!

Dining Table, Part IV

Now that the top is more or less ready for finish, I need to make the legs. Since this is a trestle table, it only needs 2 legs, which is nice because they are 9 inches wide!

The legs are made up of 3 parts: the bottom, the riser and the top. The bottom is what I worked on first, and is the most visible part of the leg. So when picking the boards, I used the best looking boards for the bottoms.

And the tops are rather invisible, so they were relegated to the off color red oak with all the knots that you see in the picture (middle).

I used mortise and tenon joinery for the legs as they need to resist any lateral movement of the table as well as holding up well under the bending that is placed on them in the trestle style table.

I laid out the mortises first, using a knife to make very straight and clear lines

And then I removed the bulk of the material with the drill press

It took a bit of effort, but I cleaned up the mortises by hand to get 2 matching rectangular holes.

Dining Table, Part III

Back onto the dining room table!  As a reminder, we are starting with 2 pallets that I got for free from my work, which appeared to be hardwood.

And the plan is to make a dining room table with a trestle base that has a rustic feel and accentuates the nail holes and knots of the wood.

We started with the most exciting part of the project, planing the boards that will become the top of the table.  We were unsure if they were all the same species or if they were going to be flat enough to not create a horribly warped tabletop.

All in all, there were 3 Red Oak and 2 White Oak boards.  We moved them around, flipped them over and swapped their orientation many, many times to get the best looking boards in the best looking order.

Dining Table, Part II

We finally finished the laborious task of removing all the nails from the oak planks!  It was more of a workout than any of us would have ever expected. We ended up with five boards that measure 11½” by 100”+ and six boards that measured 7-9” by 96” long.  In total it came to around 135 board feet.  At my local hardwood supplier that would have cost, for red oak, about $550, more for White Oak.  I would say that all of the work and effort was ultimately worth not buying the lumber outright. And the best part is, they we ‘pre-distressed’ for me!

I bought a moisture meter to test the boards’ condition.  I didn't know how long they had been sitting out in the elements, soaking up water.  The average moisture content was just around 10% and I believe that is close enough to the ambient humidity in my house and garage to begin working these boards.  

Other boards in the garage came in between 6-8% moisture.

In order to make sure that the planks would be as close to stable as possible, I like to cut to rough length well prior to milling.  The more end grain that is exposed and the proximity of that end grain to the final size of the board, the less surprise I will have when milling and cutting later.  I also wanted to remove any unusable wood, due to MAJOR splitting or cracking.  Minor splitting or cracking is encouraged!  I selected the boards and pieces that would make up the understructure of the table and began cutting.

 I have 2 remaining boards to make the rest of the undercarriage of the bench, I do not think I will have enough to make 2 benches at this time… or if we will want 2 benches.

Since I do have a 6” Jointer and a planer, I decided to mill the pieces that were small enough for me to handle.  These will end up being the feet and top supports of the matching bench that I will make alongside the table.

As you can see, there are 3 White Oak boards, and 1 Red Oak.  With how dark we are planning on making the table, I am not sure it will matter.  I really like the fact that some of the boards will show ray fleck from being quartersawn. 

Quartersawn is the most stable cut from a log that you can get because the major direction of expansion is along the circumference of the rings.  When they run in the quartersawn direction, they only effect a small distance, thus the piece of wood does not move as much.  

This applies to all species of wood, but when it comes to Oak, you get a pretty grain design when cut in this position.  This is what we call Ray Fleck, and it is the hallmark of the Mission style of furniture.  You can see it on these boards as the white spots in the grain.  They really stand out when finished and provide an aesthetic that is unique to quartersawn oak.

 

Earlier today I put the design into Google Sketchup to make sure that I had enough length for all my tenons and boards and that I was not missing anything.  With a little preset coloring and texture, this is what my design looks like at this point.  Nothing is set in stone, especially any aesthetic elements, but the major parts are all here.

Dining Table, Part I

Our house has had a gaping hole in it since we moved in.  There is a dining room that has housed everything except a dining table.  I want to make one, I need to make one… and now I will.

I found 2 pallets in the yard behind work that looked to be planked with 2x10 hardwood timbers.  Beneath the weathered grey exterior, I think I saw the prominent grain of Oak.

They were well weathered and did not appear to be pressure treated with chemicals.  I looked up the IPPC code that was stamped, and it seems that they were heat treated but not fumigated to kill bugs.  I am not too worried about it because I will be sealing it up once it is built, but better to know.

The first job was getting them home, which required a reciprocating saw and an 11 inch blade to separate the cross-timbers that tied the pallets together.  We tried to remove the nails from the pallet all together, but they proved to be too difficult to remove.  They ended up being 5” long and their heads would just give way when trying to pull them.

We cut them into sections, removed the ends with a jig saw (they were heavily checked and cracked) and went about removing the sections of cross-timbers one by one, cutting the remaining nails about ½” above the hardwood, hammering them through and then pulling them.  A lot of work, but I think the finished effect will be worth it.

I just had to see what the wood looked like underneath, so I took one of the smaller boards and ran it through my planer.  There was some heavy cracking and peeling on this board, and it will need to be cut into smaller lengths.  I, therefore, was not too worried about milling this board without flattening one side first.

So far, what I have briefly cleaned up with a hand plane has looked like Red Oak, just like this board. There are still 6 boards that need to be de-nailed, for a grand total of 11.  I have a moisture meter and metal detector coming next week to ensure that the wood is ready to be worked.  I am not sure how long they were out in the elements.

I think that the cracks and nail holes and rough looking grain and knots will give the table the rustic feel that we are looking for.