Marri Dining Table and Chairs
Hello All
My first post, to a) say a big thanks to all others who post so we can learn and b) to give back by showing how I built the dining table and chairs in the garage in case its useful for someone else. Also a thanks to other sites that gave me information of how to do what was required (fine woodworking, you tube upholstery lessons etc). The internet is a wonderful thing.
Oh yes c) - show off a bit because I am chuffed that I could do the chairs never having done chairs before.
I'm an 80/20 person (20 effort, 80 result). So I bought a few machine tools second hand (arms and shoulders getting on a bit sore for too much in the way of hand tools), cheap power tools, made a cyclone and dust collection system for essentially nothing, paid for the wood and then spent 6 months doing it in my spare time.
I've made a few things over the years mostly simple cabinets, bedside drawers, bed head, tallboy, entertainment centre and the like but nothing as complex as chairs especially bits with funny angles and curves in them.
The dining suite is almost finished now - just a couple more coats on the table top and finish coats on two of the chairs. We had to commission it for Christmas dinner or else! I have to shift the table back to the garage to finish - heavy dude!!
Marri is not really my cup of tea (prefer a nice rich Jarah) but "Her Indoors" likes it and the relatives seemed to like it. Even the mother in law said she was impressed and she does not impress easily (her words!)
Over the next few days I'll post on how I did the work. But if you have any questions feel free to ask. I have taken pics along the way in preparation for this post and it might be a bit long for some so here goes.
Tony
Back to the prototype chair
Firstly thanks for all your kind words, hopefully my descriptions and tips will be of use.
The chairs had three tricky bits as far as I could see, curved back slats at 90x10mm say 650-700 long.
The tall 1050mm curved back legs
The floating tenon joints some at an angle.
So the legs - needed a template - I would be making 16 of these for 8 chairs. Drew one up on a piece of 6mm ply - a bit more rugged than mdf. (If I was to do it again, I might use thicker ply as the template was getting a bit tired after 16 legs).
How do you draw a meter long set of double curves - (as Egg Shen says in film Big trouble from little China - "Its not easy"). I marked the key points first from the plan and then used 3mm square mdf strips to follow the points / curve and pinned them in place. The thin strips made a nice curve(s). I then drew along the thin strips onto the ply.
This I then cut roughly to the line (couple mil' outside) on the bandsaw. I then used rough files and coarse sandpaper to get the template to the lines drawn.
The attached pics show the template on a main leg piece of Marri later in the project and then on the band saw ready to cut. Also a leg later in the project just off the router.
I attached the template to the leg wood (1100x110x30mm) with that really sticky double sided carpet tape - really useful in the wood shop as a temporary thin clamp that doesn't get in the way.
Home made router table for back legs
So now I had a leg template but I needed to get 16 all the same (+ - a bit of a mil:U). Apparently a router table was the go. Never used one of these before let alone make one - and reading as I had done they can be hazardous. I was also thinking (at this stage) that I might also use the router table as a jointer later for the rough Marri I might buy.
I made the router table out of a piece of white gloss laminate kitchen bench cut off ( someone gave me for nothing on Gumtree). The fence was again offcuts I scrounged for nothing locally.
The router was attached to the bottom (the GMC micro adjust unit mentioned earlier) after routing away the underside of the bench down to 8mm for the size of the router base. I put this on my B&D workmate and used some cross 15x20mm cross strips to make the top attach to the bench top.
The previous post has a pic of it.
Then all I had to do was route the pine leg to the template. Now this was a little scary never having done this before. A high speed bit sticking up through the table passing a meter long curvy bit of wood.
I cannot stress enough - be careful with this. Use push devices - I used two of those rubber flat base yellow handle things carba-tec sells (yes I actually bought them - can't spend too much on safety). I also used proper safety goggles not just glasses. Also bought a proper emergency stop switch to power the router through and put this at my standing location on the edge of the router top - essential.
I found that my perspex chip over bit shield fogged up with dust a lot (particularly the Marri) and restricted my view. The dust collection was fine but my lying around perspex was probably not anti-static.
So table routing was a risk but approached carefully it went OK. I allowed a bit say 25-50mm on each end of the leg oversize so any rough lead in and out issues could be cut off.
Oh yes the cheap and nasty router. Well remembering that all this was a prototype I bought the cheapest router I could find that had the features required - 1500w+,variable speed and micro up and down adjust I think top of range GMC - after they had gone bust from ebay. I wasn't going to spend $300+ on a Triton or Makita for something that I might not be able to do repeatedly.
So how did it go. Well there was a bit of run out in the bearings - so some vibration at low speeds. Hand held you wouldn't have noticed but bolted to a table you sure do.
It was just noisier than it should have been but lasted the project fine and is still going OK.
So I could make the back legs. I also now had parts for the mould / press for the back slats as they should be a similar curve to the legs- Next post tomorrow I think.