6 Attachment(s)
Ironbark medieval/rectory dining table
I've had this project since October last year when friends asked me about some old timber they wished to dress up a little and join together to make a rough outdoor table. What was described to me was big heavy planks, very old and weathered that had been sitting in a paddock for years and sounded a bit too much for my equipment to handle. I initially recommended a local business that had an industrial thicknesser but went to check out the timber in person first. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of these planks in their raw state, just an offcut, but when I first saw them I thought it was a lost cause. There was around 10 pieces approx >250mm wide, 50mm thick in 2500-2800mm lengths of heavily weathered, creviced, warped and twisted lumber. I don't mind a challenge but I couldn't see how you could get a machined plank out of any of them. And man they were deceivingly heavy. I thought maybe they were ironbark just due to the weight but settled on redgum due to the colour. Late last year I've had a builder and cabinet maker call it ironbark at first sight, without any hints, or red ironbark to be more precise, so that's what we're going with.
Here's a recent pic of an off-cut showing the weathering and some defects of the timbers
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I took home 7 of the better pieces, none were perfect and needed heavy machining. By using a combination of table saw, bandsaw and electric plane to reduce the sizes of the boards and make some flat surfaces to reference from I ended up with some nice looking boards. I'd basically run a chalk line down one side, put through the bandsaw, joint with the electric plane then reference that line against the table saw fence. After a couple of cuts, sometimes freehand on another chalk line I'd end up with two pretty much parallel sides with minor finishing with the plane. For the faces I'd primarily use the TS but with a cutting capacity of ~90mm I'd make rough rip cuts on either edge and finish off with a through cut on the BS and plane again. I really only needed 3 square sides and the ugly side would remain underneath the table.
This shows an initial fitup and arrangement of pieces. The 4 larger pieces were among the best of the lot. Two of the three smaller pieces were split from one normal sized piece that had bad defects elsewhere and the middle piece was cut from a badly deformed piece that was originally as large as all the others. In the end the arrangement looks patterned and better than all planks being same sized.
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I tried my best to line up the boards. Sprung some up, some down. The joining surfaces ended up pretty good with only some minor gaps. These end shots show the extremes of warpage I suppose. I thought I'll just glue 'em all up and go from there.
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Glued up into groups of three then all as one. Despite efforts to spring boards one way or the other, they just slid back to the original position as the glue acted as lubricant. Again, I just glued 'em up and thought I'd come up with a strategy when it's all cured and one big slab.
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