Project Information
A friend of ours and his wife bought a new house in the north Georgia mountains and needed a dining room table. We selected a design from the internet, packed a few tools and headed to their house last week. My friend has a very spacious shop left by the previous owner but is sparsely equipped. The only large stationary tool is a Craftsman 12" RAS set up with a long cutting table. My friend borrowed a Craftsman table saw to use. It was a fairly new model, but was underpowered for the lumber we had.
My friend and I went to a mill in the area to select the wood for the project. Initial discussions at the mill with the miller lead us to a nice stack of dry cherry, but it was a bit too pricey for my friend. We ended up getting knotty alder at around $3/BF (no idea if that was a good price or not). Knotty alder is a hardwood in the maple family but is not too dense. I found it pretty easy to work with.
We glued up the tabletop and made the trestles. We used biscuits for half the table top glue up but there was too much trouble with the alignment with the biscuits so the balance of the tabletop glue up was done sans biscuits. The top came out pretty wavy so we used some drop offs to make some supports to draw the tabletop and force it to be flatter. With a 1-¾" thickness, it did draw up a bit but not completely. Some sanding effort with a belt sander was needed to get it acceptably flat. The "client" picked out a Colonial Maple stain which they will apply after doing the finishing sanding.
We bought lumber to build two benches but we ran out of time.
Finished dimensions are 43-½" wide, 95" long and 30" high with breadboard ends on the top.
My friend and I went to a mill in the area to select the wood for the project. Initial discussions at the mill with the miller lead us to a nice stack of dry cherry, but it was a bit too pricey for my friend. We ended up getting knotty alder at around $3/BF (no idea if that was a good price or not). Knotty alder is a hardwood in the maple family but is not too dense. I found it pretty easy to work with.
We glued up the tabletop and made the trestles. We used biscuits for half the table top glue up but there was too much trouble with the alignment with the biscuits so the balance of the tabletop glue up was done sans biscuits. The top came out pretty wavy so we used some drop offs to make some supports to draw the tabletop and force it to be flatter. With a 1-¾" thickness, it did draw up a bit but not completely. Some sanding effort with a belt sander was needed to get it acceptably flat. The "client" picked out a Colonial Maple stain which they will apply after doing the finishing sanding.
We bought lumber to build two benches but we ran out of time.
Finished dimensions are 43-½" wide, 95" long and 30" high with breadboard ends on the top.