Maple Coffee Table 3

Half lap marked out on one of the dividers

 Half lap roughed out on the table saw  then cleaned up with a router plane

Finished half lap

Divider glued into place

Ravenous Routing

One of the projects that had been on my to-do list for way too long was repainting the front door of our house.  I had a pint of colour match paint made up over two years ago but it's easy to find better things to do. The door is constructed of steel with a glass window in the top half.  The window trim was in rough shape so part of the plan was to repair it.  As I began stripping the door it became clear to me that repairing the exterior side of the window trim would not be feasible. There was no information on the door to identify the manufacturer so sourcing the appropriate plastic trim was not an option.  As I would be keeping the interior trim and there was matching trim on windows on either side of the door I decided to replicate the original trim with wood. I found a piece of rough cut oak that I was able to mill down to one and a half inch square. The door was an inch and a half thick and the window was half an inch thick so the first step was to cut two rabbets to match, a rib of wood was left between the rabbets to meet the interior trim at half the door thickness.

The pieces were cut to length with mitered corners to fit the window frame.  I cut them a little long and test fit them.  As they were matching up with extruded plastic posts to screw them to the interior trim the fit needed to be precise.

The next step was to try and match the profile of the original trim.  This required multiple passes over a variety of router bits on the router table.  I did not have a router table so I made one out of the right extension of my table saw. A combination of straight bits, roundover bits, and cove bits were used. All four pieces were passed through each router table setup to ensure consistency. Towards the end of the routing process much of the supporting wood had been removed and I was forced to improvise a support system to stabalise the trim as I passed it over the router table.

The trim came together perfectly and was as close a match to the original profile that I could have asked for.

Maple Coffee Table 2

The rail tenons were cut with a handheld router and edge guide. A marking gauge was used to scribe the location of the tenon shoulders.  This severed the face fibers of the wood and eliminated tareout during routing. The joints came together nice and tight with minor face offset, maybe a couple thousands of an inch.

After gluing the rail and stiles overnight i moved on to the dividers that will hold the table top tiles.  I will be lap joining the dividers to the rails and stiles with pocket dovetails.

Once the dovetail pockets are done I will finish off the table top by cross lapping the dividers and rout rabbets to hold the tiles.

Maple and Tile Coffee Table 1

I finally found the motivation to get rolling on the coffee table project I promised my better half...2 years ago. I needed to rearrange the shop to the point where I could dig out the rough maple boards from the bottom of my lumber pile.  I really need to build a proper lumber rack and sheet goods storage....maybe 2 years from now.

The maple boards came from an estate auction of a boat and furniture builder and I was able to snatch them up for a steal, pennies to the board foot.

The boards I chose were around 11 inches wide and 1.5 inches thick.  I was aiming for a 1 inch thick tabletop. The boards were quite bowed and milling them at their full width would have reduced their thickness significantly to get them flat.  For this reason I ripped the boards to 5 and 6 inches wide prior to milling.

 There is a certain satisfaction that comes from taking rough lumber and milling it to furniture quality wood.

Next came the mortises to attach the table top styles to the rails so to speak.  I had planned on routing the mortises on this project but had to change my plans when I realized I did not have a 1/2 inch spiral upcut bit that I needed and I would need to devise some sort of edge guide.  I used a 1/2 inch forstner bit in the drill press to hog out the majority of the material then cleaned it up with a chisel.

Next up will be tenons to fit the mortises and dovetailed/halflapped dividers to hold the tiles that make up a fair portion of the table top.

A helping hand

While constructing a tablesaw outfeed table I ran into some difficulty when it came time to cut a 4x8 sheet of laminate.  Not only was the laminate akward due to it's size but also it's flexability.With half the sheet on the saw table the other half was touching the floor.  I constructed a support out of a saw horse and a strip of plywood.

 The next problem I encountered was that the laminate was so thin it would slide under the rip fence and although my fence capacity was sufficient for the cut my saw table was not.  The laminate would bend down below the table heigh and catch on the rear fence rail.  A few boards clamped to the underside of the fence solved both these problems. 

With a little creativity I was able to safely and successfully cut the laminate to size.

Custom bath table

This table required some creative design due to the asymetric nature of the jacuzzi tub it was built for.  The table is built from mahogany and the legs are pine.  One pair of legs do not actually support the table, they hook over the tub handle to prevent the table from falling in.  The othe pair of legs are taller to account for dropped section on the far side of the tub and keep the table level.

 The legs were attached with through mortise and tenon joints. The tenons stand proud of the tabletop as a decorative element. A recessed circle was routed into the table to hold a warm drink.

The table was finished with a few wipe on coats of a varnish/oil mix.