Thread: table design questions

looks great!

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

You could strengthen them further by drilling a hole straight through all the fingers and inserting a dowel.

Don’t knock the Aldi chisels, despite their rough and ready appearance they are usually quite flat on the backs and are made from decent quality steel.

yep just gave them a quick sharpen, cut better than new. The shank looks decent on them, in general and ok finish for so cheap.

Regarding the dowel, that's a good idea. There may be two 2.5" drywall screws up through the bottom of the test join hidden out of sight....

I believe a dowel hammered into a tight fitting hole drilled through the all the fingers would be much better for stiffness and strength than some screws into the end grain of one piece.

If you put a dowel through that your heading in the direction of a hinge .I wouldn't reduce the glued sides of those fingers which is the strongest part of that joint . . Try it on a couple of test scraps and feel the difference when you load it up by hand . You may be able to feel it let go quicker with less gluing surface being there . Or get fancy with weights . If you’ve ever felt dowel glued into two bits with no glue holding the faces . Like one dowel left in between a chair leg and a rail when the rest have broken and there is no glued face holding in between . It’s like it’s made of rubber . Pretty springy and no strength .

having made the test joint, I'm not too concerned by strength anymore. I can stand and bounce on it when in both ^ and v and it doesn't flex or give at all. Granted the lengths of each piece are only ~ 30cm long. Maybe I'll dowel up into the end grain. Don't really want to butcher my box joint though! I'd like to think I'll make them well enough that they can hold on their own.

what a start.

When measuring the length of the angled uprights in sketchup, I managed to measure the height, not the length. so out by 6mm. Then because I drew the plans so long ago, I for some reason assumed the angle was 5°, but no, was 7.5°. Of course, I realised all this after cutting all the pieces to length. Anyway, will persevere with the 'new' dimensions. just wasted two bottom sections of the leg but have enough left over wood to cut a couple more. Drew up the table again in sketchup with new dimensions and not really noticeable. My wife said 'aren't they both vertical?'.

Anywho, my box jointing skills are getting better. a Noticeable improvement in my japanese pull saw sawing technique (it's called a pull saw for a reason!), and a growing confidence in the chisel. so confident that my thumb and forefinger are now pocked with nips.

I can get the joints cut and hogged out much quicker now. I realised it was easier to chisel out the bulk if I did more saw cuts across the area to be removed.

I made some hardwood jaws for my bench top vice, which makes things easier. I pretty much have a garage set up for diy and metal work (as mentioned earlier, restoring a 1971 morris mini), so no wooden work bench yet unfortunately!

I've unfortunately got some tearout from my mitre saw when cutting to length, next time I will either a) have a decent table saw with cross cut sled, or b) make a sacrificial fence for the mitre saw. I have found the swartz SCMS cuts very accurate and repeatable angles with a bit of setup. Digital inclinometer - zero it on the base, then attach to the blade and set angle.

managed to get some pics.. this is the first actual box joint of the table prior to gluing.

This will be directly under the table top



This will be under the table top but visible if you look under the table!



The view from the inside



I'm happy with it.. will do the mostly unseen joints first while I hopefully improve. What I'm struggling with is determining where to shave off a little bit here and there to get the joint to fully seat.

Try Derek's trick - rub with pencil and see where it transfer

Russ

Originally Posted by russ57

Try Derek's trick - rub with pencil and see where it transfer

Russ

Thanks! Will try it on the next leg!

So one leg cut. fits together well. only took a week!

Will hopefully get the next one completed on the weekend





It's not perfect, but it's not fine furniture, and I'm not a fine woodworker! Plus it's going to have a piece of formboard screwed to the top of it, so yeh!

Glued up the first leg last night, used a ratchet strap to pull it all together tight.

Sanded the ends down with 80 grit on the orbital, still need to sand the whole thing to 120 grit, tempted to get a trim router and do a 1/4 round over on all the edges rather than just a quick smoothing with the electric sander. have ordered a tin of Osmo Polyx Tint in graphite to finish the legs with. Polyx Oil Tints - Natural Timber Oils Victoria

Am within 0.1° on the 5° angles, and 0.1° out top vs bottom, according to my little digitial inclinometer.

just caught onto this thread and even before I saw your name.....I spied a mini under restoration

Originally Posted by Tonto

just caught onto this thread and even before I saw your name.....I spied a mini under restoration

That would be the little bastard..





1971 mini k, which was meant to be a quick fixer upper but turned into a bare metal, nut and bolt rebuild. just needs paint on top and interior/glass put in. oh and possible a rebore as she's a bit smokey.

spent a good 7 hours in the garage today. things feel quick while doing them, but actually take hours!

have gotten the second leg ready for glue up - previous leg took me a week worth of nights. This leg took 1 day! have found efficiencies and better ways to do things. The first leg I measured and cut all the box joints separately, assuming the bunnings DAR was all equal in width, however some bits were >2mm wider than others, so it threw out my joint alignment which is why I have some reasonable gaps in the first leg. This time I measured and cut the box joints on the uprights, then traced around them onto the mating pieces. Cut, chisel, slot together with minimal adjustments. Also cut the uprights at the same time, and as I prefer to cut with some wiggle room and chisel to the line after, I just used a normal hand saw which was much quicker. I think I have the wrong pull saw for ripping down the grain - it's great for across the grain... is this to do with the set of the teeth? It tends to wander a bit.

So anyway, the hard work is done.

Next time, I'm using a table saw.

Oh i picked up a mitre saw stand from aldi today for $49. It's a good piece of kit. It's the exact same one as this @ trade tools https://www.tradetools.com/product-r...itre-saw-stand

It matches the swartz SCMS perfectly.