| Blog series by Lee Barker | updated 314 days ago | 4 parts | 3568 reads | 2 comments total |
Part 1: Parameters
Here’s what the client wanted: A large table made from reclaimed fir beams, which he would select and have resawn.Large would mean about 8 feet.It should expand to twice its size. That, yes indeedy, would be 16 feet.Something that would go in his house of lots of reused wood things, mostly softwoods.No crack in the center where leaves would go. My first suggestion was a trestle table with ends that pullout to include a leaf. Not enough net gain of real estate. I cast about for ...
Part 2: Basic Bones
The legs are approaching 4 inches, glued up from four pieces but laid out so that it looks like 3. Tapers were eyeballed on one and transferred to the other three and sanded. Rails are 5/4 (finished) reclaimed pine, just a few knots.
Part 3: Moving Parts
This evolved but underused design is quite simple, in a way, but kind of boggling at the same time. The essential element here is that the slide must rise from zero (flush with the top of the skirt) to the thickness of the top (15/16”) in the exact distance of the length of the leaf. That’s the basic part. What’s more interesting is how the two ends interact. That’s not to mention that the slides must be dead solid identical. Frid suggests a fixture for the ta...
Part 4: The Top and the Leaves
The client liked the idea of bookmatched top. Four boards would make it 42 inches wide. That meant, to get balance in the knot patterns, that the two outboard boards would be matched and likewise the two interior ones. It came out quite nice. There were nailholes that had been split, and they were blackened. I used a mixture of epoxy and carbon to fill those. Other knots that were loose and had been removed for planing were replaced and superglued in. In some cases I sliced pieces of...
