Last weekend, I went over to my place in Swansea and found some great stock in the old barn on my Great Grandad’s old homeplace. I blogged this almost two years ago, and near the end, I posted a picture of the end of a small beam. This is the stock that I chose to finish resawing for the table top. There were two 16’ long 5×5’s just sitting inside. I don’t know where they came from, but they looked very old and weathered. You could see where the termites and pine beetles had taken their toll on them as I had to just cut out the usable parts.

First, I went over them with wire brush to remove most of the dirt and years of crud that had accumilated. I was delighted to learn that these apparently hadn’t been used for anything, as they didn’t have even one nail between them. I made sure and used my Lumber Wizard this time. Next, I squared two sides on the jointer. I was really impressed with the grain and realized that this stuff was the true essence of “heart pine”. Tight grain, full of pine tar and just beautiful.

After installing the new blade, I commenced resawing. About 3/4’s of the way through, the saw slowed down, got noisy and the blade started to wander. Crap, another nail I thought! After finishing the cut, I discovered that all that pine tar and pitch had accumulated on the blade and bearing guides. Sooooo, I commenced to cleaning the blade. I ended up putting a liberal amount of mineral spirits on a rag and wiping down the blade after scraping most of it off with a piece of board. After looking at the guide bearings, I decided to re-tune the band saw. The pine tar was everywhere. At this point, I had been at it for a couple of hours and was really aggravated and a little tired. While having the side’s of the wheel well on the band saw open and spinning it with my hand, I was greeted with a very painful sensation on the end of my thumb.
Whilst squealing like a little girl, I discovered that I had let the end of my thumb get in between the blade and the bottom wheel. To make a long story short, it had just pinched off a piece of skin about the size of a pea. This is where the “lesson learned” part comes in.

Soooo, upstairs I went and while freaking out my wife and baby, I cleaned up in the sink, applied a bandage and then went back downstairs, determined to make the best of a really crappy situation. It didn’t take long to realize it was time to take my not so happy a$$ to bed and continue the fight another day.
Tonight I went back downstairs, finished tuning up my bandsaw and started finishing my resaw of the table top. Things went much better tonight as I was rested and knew what I had to both concentrate on and avoid.
On round two, I did a couple of things to help the re sawing effort. The first one is to put a light coat of mineral spirits on the blade to help keep it from letting the pine tar stick to it. The other one was to stop about half the way through and clean the blade. Here’s a shot of the gummed up blade.

Here’s a couple of shots of the resawed boards showing worm holes that have been gummed up solidly with pitch.


Here’s another shot of the end of the beam which shows the tight grain and apparent old age.

I thank the Good Lord I’ve still got most of my thumb and really glad that the BS wasn’t even turned on. A valuable lesson indeed.
Stay tuned, glueing up the top comes next!

Anyhow, now that all the stock for the legs has been milled square, it’s time to taper the legs. The legs on this particular table are rather large, so I had to come up with an alternate method to the table saw. I had recently read an article in one of the wood magazines that used a thickness planer and the bandsaw to taper the legs. I figured I’d give it a shot.

After marking the tapers on the rough stock. I went to the band saw to cut the rough tapers. After making sure the BS blade is absolutely square to the table surface, I cut on the outside of the line by about 1/32”. Be sure to stay away from the line. 1/16” is no problem. More is better than too close because if you dip too close or into the line, you’ll decrease the flat area to the top of the taper where the cheeks of the tenon will rest. I cut too close on one and had to decrease the width of the apron by about 1/2”. In this particular case, it worked out ok because I wanted more clearance for ones legs when sticking them under the table. But beware!

Next, I took a peice of 4×6” pine that had some termite damage and cut a notch for the leg to rest in, thereby creating a planing sled to mill the taper. This doesn’t have to be pretty, but must be absolutely square and flat on the outer dimensions. The cutout for the leg doesn’t have to be perfectly shaped to the leg, but must consistently cradle it so that it does not move while traveling through the planer.


The tapered face of the leg needs to be parallel to the top surface, maybe 1/16” or so above the top. As the fat end is put into the planer, we’ll need to trim the front of the sled down to 1/4” or so below the leg so that the planer rollers will pull on the leg and not the sled.

Next, run this thiing through the planer until the face of the taper is planed to where you want it. Be sure the head is locked and just leave it like it is. Rotate it one time do the other face. Repeat this 3 more times for the other three legs.

I couldn’t believe how easy and repeatable this method is. If your stock is good and square and consistently dimensioned, this is really a piece of cake. What a set of legs!


After setup, this process went so fast, that I went ahead and cut the mortises on my mortiser.

Next comes cutting the tenons on the apron stock. Thanks, Carl.

This first pic is the jig I made out of 3/4” mdf for routing the slot in the side pieces so that the uprights (legs) will fit inside.

Once the sides have been constructed the way you want them, this particular jig will hold them when you attach the back and front cross pieces.

This one aligns the arms and back piece.

This jig will align the arms/backpiece at the right angle before adding the back slats.

Here’s a closeup of the upright leg attachment to the arms.

Here’s a couple more miscellaneous pictures taken during construction.

Hope this helps guys!

I just happen to have a good supply material. Some of it was from an old store my great grandfather and grandad once owned, some is in an old house that belonged to by great grandad and an old barn built by my great uncle. Here’s a few pictures of what we’ll be starting with:

Here’s an endgrain view of the grade of heart pine I’m hunting. Notice how tight the growth rings are. this particular piece is only 2 1/2 inches wide. This stuff is almost as hard as red oak and full of pitch. While it’s really tough on the tools, because of the pitch content it’s really stable.

Fifteen years or so passed and during that time about the only thing I did was relocate the radial arm saw bench to a wall and add some receptacles for some bench top tools. At the time I was into golf club repair, so all I needed was a small drill press and a 1” belt sander. Then, sometime around a year ago, I joined Lumberjocks and the woodworking bug bit me bigtime. I mean hook line and sinker. I had just paid off the home loan and was able to afford some tools. I bought a table saw, an OSS, a bandsaw, a router, a router table and a planer. I was able to get by with my Craftsman shop vac for a while until I got the planer. You can fill up a shop vac in about 15 min with a planer hooked up to it. So, next I purchased a Delta 1 HP dust collector. When I first started using it, I thought it was all I’d ever need. Wrong!

I’m planning to obtain a 3hp cabinet saw of some description and a bigger bandsaw and some other things. As most of ya’ll know, that 1hp Delta ain’t gonna cut the mustard. So, I figured I’d try to do some prudent planning and get dust collection under control first. There’s a slew of dust collectors and systems out there that are greatly varied and very expensive. 30 micron bags, 1 micron bags, cannister filters, cyclones collectors, 2hp, 3hp and on and on.

One day I was looking at the Grizzly site and happened to see their standard 3hp portable with 30 micron bags. $395 plus shipping. As you know, 30 micron helps, but it still passes a lot of fine dust. I had planned to build a closet of some type to help with the noise and it suddenly occured to me that if I made it reasonably air tight, I could put regular residential air filters in the walls and maybe further filter the air particles. Another design consideration is I wanted the duct work overhead as I was tired of tripping over hoses and the like. If you’ve seen the Griz G1030, the air hookup is at the bottom. I figured I could maybe mount the motor and blower overhead and flip the airbag system. So, damn the torpedo’s here we go…......nothing ventured, nothing gained. Another side benefit is that I wouldn’t have to put to bends in the ducting to get it above where I wanted it. Here’s how I put it all together.

Initially I thought I could build much of it from stuff I had laying around. I had an old water bed that had been collecting dust in the corner of the basement and I had never liked it. I sawed up the headboard to make 2×6’s and used all of the plywood from it also. I got a strange pleasure from cutting all that stuff up for this, but did save some of the straighter pieces for future projects. I started making the top of this thing first, as I would have to mount the heavy a$$ motor and blower to it. I made it out of 2×6’s and screwed 3/4” oak plywood to the top onto which attaching the motor and blower.

This is actually the bottom, the only difference it it and the top is the bottom has 5/8” plywood and the Bottom has a 3/4” oak plywood center panel.

Here is the other side.

Here’s a picture of the parts sitting in the top of the closet.

The base that came with this thing was not designed to “hang” the motor and blower from, so I ran 8” bolts all the way though the base and though the motor base. These were just “snugged up” up through the plywood to add stability and to keep it from falling if the base sheet metal broke. I put lock nuts underneath the motor base itself and these were pretty tight.

Next I started assembling the blower components to that I could make sure none of the framing would get in the way of the machinery.

Here’s a view of the top showing the bolt heads and fender washers I used.

I made the corner supports from 2×6’s formed into a T and put the top on. The 2×6 tees were probably overkill, but at least I don’t have to worry about strength.

Next, I flipped her over before it got too heavy. If you’ll notice, I only made this thing short enough so that it would fit under the garage door runners as I intend to place it between them.

I used ratchet straps to keep everything plumb and square until the plywood was put on the sides.

I added the supports for the bag mounts and also added two removable/sliding plywood pieces to hold up the bag when under load from the sawdust.

Here’s a closer view.
Although you can’t see it in these pictures, I’ve got a false wall on the inside that will force the air to move upwards and then down between the 2×6 corner supports and the front of the closet down at the bottom where I’ll have three 16×25 air filters. This will also allow the air to circulate past the motor to help with cooling. I don’t think cooling will be a problem as I let this thing run for thirty minutes or so today and the motor was just warm to the touch.

With this positioned in the garage end of the house, I’m going to run 6” ducting straight through the wall in to the main portion of my shop and then wye off to 4” side ducts for the machines I have in there. I’m going to put the cabinet saw in the garage end, along with my sliding compound miter. I’m also going to add an air filter between the garage and the main part of the shop. At the extreme other end, it’s my intention to add a paint booth as far away from the DC as possible. I hope this works as planned and so far it’s looking good to me. I’ll post the finished product soon and let ya’ll know how well or not well it works.