I borrowed a van to drive the kitchen table top to my friend’s bigger shop so that I could run it through a big 40” wide sander, but I couldn’t use the van to get it back. Yesterday I got tired of waiting and I walked over the the big shop and hoofed the 30” x 42” bastard back to my own shop up on my back.
Phew!
Haven’t had internet for the last few days but I’ve been hard at work. The kitchen table got filled up with dowels a few days ago.
Banker’s Banquet
Put two 1/4” dowels through each mortise & tennon joint yesterday. So stressful because the bastard is already glued up—you screw something up now and it’s not as easy as replacing a piece.
Had a pretty excellent day yesterday. It started off without much potential, with a 45 minute walk in the rain to work, but an americano and some food from the JJ Bean across from the shop helped warm me up.
I finished drafting up a special desk designed to hold a letterpress, and got the OK to start building. In the afternoon I did some more work on the kitchen table project, and then off to The Alibi Room for dinner and some most excellent beers with Cantilever + Press.
After that I stopped by Gastown Tattoo Parlour to watch my associate Kyle B get his throat tattooed. “I bet that hurts,” is the tattoo shop equivalent of “hot enough for ya?”
Banker’s Banquet 6
A dry fit at the end of the day, just as a spirit booster. It’s nice to see progress! Half an hour more chiseling and this guy is going to slip together easily.
Banker’s Banquet 5
With the tabletop all clamped up it’s time to work on the rest of the table.
The gets get the mortises drawn on with pencil, then the majority of the wood is drilled out on the drill press. The rest of it is chiseled out by hand.
The apron that runs around the table has the tenons cut on the table saw with a big 3/4” wide dado blade set up.
One of my MacBook pallets on it’s way to a happy Etsy customer.
Banker’s Banquet 4
Gluing up has got to be the most stressful 30 minutes of a woodworker’s week. If you screw this up you’re back to square one, and you can’t take forever making sure you don’t screw it up, because you know, the glue is drying while you’re walking around measuring and making sure everything is straight.
With drawers and boxes the big thing is trying to keep everything perfectly square, with a tabletop like this obviously you want it to be flat. Since we don’t have a 30” wide planer in my shop anything that needs to be fixed after the glue up is going to be done the old fashioned way, with a nice sharp hand plane and a straight edge to hold against it.
Banker’s Banquet 3
Planning out the order for the 6 tabletop boards, chalking the outline to get an idea of finished size. It’s a standard 4 person table, 30” x 42”.
Banker’s Banquet 2
Running the tabletop boards through the planer.
I love this part because a lot of the cool nuances in grain patter are still hidden from sight under the rough cuts of the sawmill. When the boards come out the back is the first time you really see what you’ve got.
I love the super straight lines of the grain in these boards, not a knot in sight. The thickness of the lines is typical of west coast lumber, lots of water to help you to grow, no winters to slow you down!
