My 2008 One Board Furniture Build-Off Entry Part 4

In this installment i finish flattening the top of my table by completing the breadboard ends and use yet another new joinery technique, dowels! But in staying true to the contest rules, i have to make my own dowels from the very same board!

After gluing the middle section of the table top the entire piece had a slight upwards bow to it, and flattening this section was the job of the breadboard ends, and it came out looking better than expected!

Completion of the table top ends was both tedious and exhausting, one end of my boards were fairly square and required minimal filling to get the breadboard end to fit accurately. The other end was not so easy! I used my trusty “Handy File” and lots of elbow grease, and eventually got all the boards square and the ends fitting perfectly!

Getting the very ends of the breadboard to line up with the top section was accomplished with a couple home made dowels, made from the very same maple, and were actually the cutoffs from those sections!

Creating dowels was a challenge, and they can be made a few different ways. I planned on using dowels early in my design and purchased a dowel plate and chamfer block from Hartville Tool, and i am very happy with the results. Pounding out the blanks was a little tough, but with a few tips from the recent Woodwright show i was able to create some very straight and useful dowel pins!

As always additional photos, including high resolution images are available on my website mikehacker.com!