Pedestal cores

A half sheet of MDF in block form, with the profile marked out on 2 sides.


A trip thru the band saw. Note the slices are facing up.

Another trip thru the saw. Slices still facing up.

The two offcuts from that last step are taped back on. The slices are now facing sideways. I drew a pencil line down the top kerf (the left side when the slices were facing up) so it could be seen in the photo. The bottom kerf is there, it's just hard to see.


Two more trips thru the band saw produce another left and right offcut, but this time those offcuts have the cuts from the first two trips thru the band saw in them.

The right offcut falls back into its now 3 pieces.

Peel the other offcuts apart, and the pedestal core reveals itself.

The first real idea of what this thing's going to look like.

As of yesterday at 5:51PM, the veneer is in Germantown, WI.

Pedestal blanks

I cut down some MDF on my ludicrously-sized TS sled.


Made a half-template of the pedestal profile by marking out some key points and squeezing a thin strip between some blocks clamped at those marks. On the right is a trial with a scrap of plywood (the scrap came out of the headboard template, btw).


Another exciting picture of glue drying - this time a stack of MDF. This stack is half of the glue-up for one pedestal - I'm gluing up to end up with a 7 1/2" square by 24" long blank.

Not the greatest visualization, but the blank is giving the height while that plywood scrap is giving an idea of the profile. If it's too "bowling pin-ish," now's the time to say so.

More feet

After remembering I had a screw center for the lathe, I decided to turn the feet instead of routing them. The downside of that is that a thin dry section like this is likely to "blow up" on the lathe when I inevitably have a chisel catch. Luckily I had no spares so I had to make a few more blanks.


Some turkey-day turning. It took longer to mount/demount than the turning on each one.

A preview of the finished base.

Aside: I don't like the new camera!

Feet feat

After thicknessing, the fly-cutter roughed out the feet.


...which left these little ridges since the cutter has an angle to it. I didn't think about it, maybe I could've reversed the cutter - not sure the spin direction would allow it or not. Anyway, to pattern route those ridges off...


...would put my fingers really close to the bit, so here's another crazy jig. The drill bit is the same size as the fly cutter center bit. I drilled a hole in a scrap of flooring and it presses together snugly to allow me to feed the stock around the bit while keeping my hands comfortably distant. Do a little, turn it a little, repeat.


A few wash coats of shellac to seal and protect the completed parts is bringing out what will be the finished color. Lack of photo skills + a mix of florescent and incandescent shop lights + the color settings on different monitors means this is probably far from exact color reproduction, but you get the idea.

Some more progress on tables

Profiled the table edges, cut and beveled the base blocks, sanded. Shellac is cooking.


Hard to get a good pic of the profile, but it's a thumbnail on top and a bit of round-over on the bottom. Meh.

Cut the bevels on the base blocks with a block plane, just because. They can always be made bigger, so I started small.

Feet, pedestals, and finish remain.

Table progress

Glued up more base stock.


The tops were already starting to cup a little. Added some cross-grain battens to the underside - screws in elongated holes.

Router table #2

Took off the left wing of the table saw and added another router table.


...underneath which hangs the Milwaukee monster on which I got a screaming online deal a few months back. If this router can't swing it, it's a shaper knife.
Note the third hole on the right, thru which height adjustments can be made from ABOVE the table.

Drum Sander

Square the blank, cut the dado, fit the filler strip. Ash and shellac.

1000 words

This was a plan to build the MDF cores for the table pedestals. One of my online WW'ing heroes shot this down as a waste of time and effort. Current plan is glue up a solid block and band-saw it out a-la cabriole leg.

Design questions

Object now or forever hold your peace.

Ignore all the lines on the base - it was drawn by doing 1/4 of it and copying/flipping/rotating the pieces together. I don't know how to get rid of the lines joining them.

Edge profile on the top is a swag. Note the feet on the bottom of the base. This is to give it some height and prevent it wobbling. They can easily be changed, or pitched entirely.

Chip out repair

Review: corner chipped out when pattern routing in a few spots due to grain orientation.



Hand-planed it down and glued on a little repair block.


Some routing, filing, and sanding later.


As good as I can get it.

Base chip-out repair

In a few spots the bases chipped out pretty badly. In retrospect, this was easily predictable/ avoidable but I didn't think first. A great woodworker, they say, is not one who never makes mistakes but one who can hide them well.

I hand planed the rough chipped-off edge flat, which allowed a few scraps to be glued on. After gluing, I trimmed the excess off to get it a little closer. I'll clean these up by sanding to the final shape so as to not chip out the repair.


It's very ugly right now, but the grain match on the face is what matters at this point. Everything else will sand out flush.

Table Tops

Super-fancy circle cutting jig: there's that pin again, strategically placed with respect to where the router plunge base is carpet-taped to a scrap of flooring from our family room remodel.


The two blanks were different thicknesses - since no one has gifted me a wide industrial planer, I'm sweaty and hip-deep in more of this stuff.



Viola.

Top blanks

The blanks for the tops. Again, there's significant work involved in making rough lumber into the boards out of which you make stuff.
Each of these blanks is glued-up from five sticks; each of those sticks was cut, planed, jointed, and grain-matched before they were glued up.

Once glued up, they have to be leveled again - the sticks weren't exactly the same size (my planer's knives are a little slanted, I think), there's a glue line, and there's the imperfection of aligning the faces in the same plane while gluing up.

Normally, not a big deal - just another few trips thru the planer... unless the blank is 10" wider than your planer in which case...

Notice all that fluffy stuff behind them?...

...and on the floor, and behind the bench, and on the floor on the left end of the bench, and in my shoes, and on my shirt, and leading from the basement to the chair in which I now sit typing?

There's something really satisfying about hand-planing stock: you feel like a "real" woodworker - for the first ten minutes or so. After that, it just feels like manual labor.

Table base trauma

This is one of the things I hate about WWing: there are sooo many little details to remember at every step. Forget one little detail, and you've ruined lots of effort. The forgotten thing here: pay attention to grain orientation.

The corners on this thing are oriented with the grain direction such that it's easily split off.... even when taking really shallow passes with the router. I'm thinking there's an order of cuts or a feed direction that mitigates this, but I can never remember when the chips start flying. Plan: cut off the corners, glue fresh stock on, try again with increased wisdom.

Note that there's a lot of effort (besides making the template) to get to this point: that piece of wood didn't start out all nice, flat, smooth, and of sufficient width to make these bases.

Everything looks better from higher up. I think the square peds need to be smaller and higher. More milling and gluing, yeah!

Table base template, continued

The router has been fitted to the plunge base, which is in turn double-stick taped to my homebrew circle cutting jig (dark, triangle-shaped thing sticking out from under the router). A large scrap of plywood (one of the templates from the bed) has been clamped to the table. This raises the router base up to the height of the work, and to gives something to pin the jig to.

Note the little metal pin midway between the the router body and the dowel "handle" on the end of that dark triangle. That's the pivot pin. The pin has been strategically placed with respect to the circle (which is still on it's original pin from when it was cut out) to get the right amount of arc.

The router will swing around that pin, intersecting the circle and creating an arc. Note the router is pinned and swinging around to make a circle - in the previous step (making the circle), the router was fixed (under the table) and the work was swung around. 6 vs. half-dozen.




Since I want 4 equally-spaced arcs cut out of that circle, I have to index after each cut. A mark on the table lines up to marks 1 of 4 marks on the circle (a big "X" on the circle, really).
Since I don't want the circle to move while I'm cutting the arcs, it's clamped down.



A few swings later and the first arc is described on the circle. In this pic, the circle has been rotated 90* (to the next index mark), to prepare for cutting the next arc. The router is pivoted all the way to the right of the circle.



Lather, rinse, repeat... In this pic, the router happens to be pivoted all the way to the left of the circle. If I wanted to, I could pivot the router thru a full revolution and continue to cut the circle thru the scrap on which the router/pivot is mounted.



Viola.

Bedside table, base template

A board with a nail in it the desired distance (radius) from the router bit.



Drill a hole in another board, stick it on the nail, a few spins, and...