Maple Dining Table

This is a dining table to replace a store bought table we had. The design is based on a table made by Willis and Gambier in the UK from the forecast collection with several changes to suit my tastes. This project took me about 3 months of spare time to complete with some other smaller things to fill in time while going through the various stages.

The construction of the base is all pegged mortise and tenon joints. I used 2 inch wide by 1/2” thick tenons for all my joints with 3/8” maple pegs to stregthen them and draw them together. The base and top stretchers are made from 8/4 maple while the legs are made from 12/4 maple. The cross pieces are 6/4 joined with half lap joints and then doweled into the base. The only metal in the table is the figure 8 fasteners holding the top down!

The top is made up of 7 6/4 boards edge glued together and then planed flat using a cabinet scraper, smooth plane and sand paper of various grits. I spent a few good hours with my plane going cross/diagonal to the grain to flatten with a 50 degree bevel up plane to avoid tearout. I accumulated almost a full garbage bag of plane shavings from the top and bottom. I sanded the top to 320 grit before starting to finish it.

The whole table is finished with Minwax satin polyurethane thinned 1/2 and 1/2 with mineral spirits. The base got 5 coats and the top has 7 coats. The final treatment was rubbing the top with 0000 steel wool, applying paste wax and then buffing.

This has been my most ambitious project yet and ended up using most of my tools at some point to complete it. Off to the next project!