Thread: Not quite a toy but ready for toys to play upon!

Not quite a toy but ready for toys to play upon!

The young builder & his wife across the road had a little boy 3 months ago so the house has to be rearranged ready for the little blokes pulling up and playing on and with everything. I've already given them a couple of smaller toys ready for him to enjoy playing with.

They had an old coffee table in their lounge room that wouldn't have been safe for the little blokes exploring.
Josh had recently done a reno on an old house and saved all the the old Aussie hardwood framing, then asked "do you think you could make us a coffee table".

I needed something to keep busy as our daughter was in hospital with pneumonia just 8 days after the arrival of our sixth grandchild, a boy, Marcus.
Her hospitalization was 4 weeks including major surgery to clean the lung, it's been a difficult couple of months for all especially her who is now on a long recovery.

The table was a welcome distraction and steep learning curve as Josh then said he'd like it as an "end grain" table...WOW!
I de-nailed the old Aussie hardwood, put it through the thicknesser, then glued the boards to together.
The next task was slicing the lot into 40mm strips on my 10" Bosch Contractors Tablesaw [it didn't like that process] before again another glue up.
The glued end grain pieces weren't quite wide enough so I added an old fence rail to the sides for extra width.
The whole board then needed to be surfaced and made flat so onto eBay for some "linear rails" to make up a router sled.
Mean while the cracks, splits, holes and defects were filled with Ice Epoxy Resin plus the smaller holes with Starbond CA.
First attempt, the old Makita D Handle router [from my passed father-in-law] collet failed but "spares not available, bother!
I purchased a new secondhand Bosch Professional 1300W [Made in USA] router and along with the Carbitool surfacing bit got the table flat [just 3.5hrs].
[Thank you Ian for your advice]
The next process was to add a skirt/border around the whole table which was glued, screwed and plugged in place before hours & hours of sanding.
I was fortunate enough to score the purchase of a beaut secondhand Bosch Professional Turbo Sander from a forum member to assist with this task.
[Thank you Peter]

AND FINALLY the table is ready for 4 coats of my homemade wipe-on-ploy along with sanding between coats plus a top coat of Satin Poly to finish.
What an effort for a toymaker as it took up all of my shed and more for nearly 2 months but a top learning experience.
Cheers crowie

PS - Old Aussie Hardwood is beautiful but some damn hard & heavy!

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