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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2007
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    Default French Provincial Style Dining Table

    No WIP for this one as I had no great expectation that it would ever be a successful project.

    We have had a 900mm wide refectory table for many years and for at least the last 15 years a common theme from the Fuzzette after a nice dinner has been 'I wish this table was 6" wider'.

    After pondering and dismissing the idea of adding outriggers to the existing table I started playing around in my stash of second quality Maple Silkwood. The boards I have are full of knots, crotch pieces, sapwood and woolly bits. I first experimented with a test cabriole leg that became the first actual of four, then I started playing with bits to make the rest of the frame and top and I pretty much made things up as I went along.

    Originally I had intended this to be a draw leaf table, but when the Fuzzette did some height testing against our existing chairs I was informed that it was not to be a mm higher than the single thickness top on the frame unless I wanted to also deliver new chairs as well. Since I had already made the main top piece 600mm shorter than the table it was to replace and not being able to easily cut down the legs, I needed to come up with some other way to make the extension and decided to just add a separate outboard extension that sits on pull out leaf supports.

    It was difficult to find enough clearish pieces to glue up the top and it was a major PITA to flatten as the grain runs every which way around the knots and tearout while planing was extremely annoying.


    table.jpg top.jpg extension.jpg

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  3. #2
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    Default Wood movement

    I don't really have a consistent (any?) rule of thumb when it comes to making allowance for panel movement in frame and panel construction. On previous projects I've been more than generous, preferring to err on the more is better side, just in case..

    In my Brushbox TV cabinet, the top panel was reduced pretty severely, mainly because I had splintering along the edge to contend with, however as far as I can determine the Brushbox makes minimal to no seasonal movement and today's picture of the gap looks to me to be just as wide as when it was built.
    gap3.jpg

    When building the frame and panel top for this table out of Maple Silkwood, I took more care on an expansion guesstimate. This picture of a splinter I had to fix during finishing shows the allowance I made along both long edges.
    split.jpg

    Post Cyclone Marcia and a couple of weeks of very high humidity, I'm pleased to notice that the gaps have closed without stress on the joints. I'm also guessing by reference to which of our house doors are sticking that the timber work around here has probably reached full stretch for expected seasonal movement. However, as can be seen in this current pic, there's no more margin of error if the table top wants to keep growing.
    gap2.jpg
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  4. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
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    Blue Mountains
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    Default

    Very nice table Fuzzie. The photo with finish really shows up the beauty of that timber.

    Looks like a good thing you erred on the side of caution, I guess the humidity drops off a fair bit after the cyclone has passed?

    Are they through tenons on the mitres?
    The time we enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

  5. #4
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    Default

    Actually I was a bit worried I might not have made enough allowance on this build. The frame pieces are 140 wide with the long sides tenonned through the ends. The panel is about 750mm wide.

  6. #5
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    So I'm guessing you need a mortising machine to do those through mortises. (I've never used one) Did you do the mortise first and then cut the mitre? Do you come in from either side or go straight through from one side only. It seems to me everything would have to be spot on to go 70mm deep from either side and meet up in the middle, or is that just what mortisers do?

    And then to match the tenons, how did you cut them?

    I'm imagining how fiddly it must have been to get those mitres matching up with the through tenons involved (would have been a huge challenge for me anyway)

    Peter
    The time we enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

  7. #6
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    Re the humidity. Over the last week the Relative humidity here has been sitting in the 80-90% range. Today it is down to 62% and things are starting to contract. I seem to remember the first time I lived in Brisbane in '74/5 the relative humidity reach 100+%. There had been a long stretch of rain and hot days with the humidity sitting in the high 90's, followed by a cooler day when it didn't condense out but rather the air became supersaturated.

    No mortising machine here. I cut the mortises before the mitre. I did start each mortise from both sides using a router (something I haven't tried before), but that only did a depth of maybe 20mm. The rest of the depth was chopped out by hand from each side. I have previously tried drilling out the waste but clearing out the rest of it that way doesn't seem to work very well for me. By routing the start of the hole this time it helped keep the chisel aligned for the rest of the depth of cut. I cut the mitres and tenons by hand and used the offcut of the mortise side of the mitre to help in sizing each tenon. Because of the size of frame pieces I used a small panel saw to rip the tenon cheeks and not a back saw. The mortises are slightly flared and the tenons wedged. The mitres aren't perfect but I called 3 out of 4 good during fitting and decided trying to fix the last one would have meant endlessly going round in circles trying to refit everthing square. With the frame as wide as it is I think the outside corners have opened a tad as the frame has expanded.

    Fitting the joints was the hardest part. Since the table top is about 3 times the size of my work bench, I had to do the layout work and glue up on the garage floor.

  8. #7
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    Thanks Fuzzie, I know what you mean about chasing the mitres around. I've made a few picture frames lately and getting the four mitres spot on is extremely challenging, and that's with timber only about 60mm wide, and without a big tenon sticking out.

    Great work
    The time we enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

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