Help! Ghosts of Christmas past haunting me with Ana White triple pedestal farmhouse design!

Ana White does not understand wood movement, her designs are terrible that way. Forget the frame, that is the problem, it is known among wood workers as the “panel of doom”. Almost every beginning wood worker thinks a frame around a panel is a good idea until about sixth months after it is constructed. If you must, construct a proper breadboard end that allows for wood movement. The other point of concern is how the top is attached to the base. Once again consideration for wood movement is crucial. You can use bolts or screws in slots or buttons or z clips, there are lots of good ways to do it.

-- Bondo Gaposis

Ana White is the problem. I’ve seen this identical post about a hundred times.

Jeez.

Thanks for the quick responses! I’m attaching the legs with the afforementioned slots/screws, so that’ll be one build error corrected. The most difficult part of fixing this flawed design is the board running across the center; I can’t modify that without changing the aesthetic of the table, otherwise proper breadboards would be an easy fix.

I had another epiphany this morning: I know this is sacrilege, but what about utilizing hardwood ply for the panels? That would solve most of the problems with the main drawback being it’s no longer a “solid wood” table. I don’t see pine really being an heirloom piece, so is that really a drawback? I don’t think so.

This is an impossible table, can’t possibly work. Crazy that anyone would encourage people to build this way. You might have done a bit better with drier wood, but it still would have eventually split and cracked like crazy.
To build a new top you essentially have three choices:
1. Make a plain top with no breadboards, all solid wood planks joined together.
2. A plain top with breadboards.
3. Make the panels out of plywood.

My advice would be to explain to the client why the board along the middle was a bad idea (ie impossible, given the laws of physics) from the start and see if they’re OK with a table without it. You’re right that a bit of plywood is not the end of the world, but they may prefer solid wood over the piece in the middle of the table.

Seriously, though. I don’t get it – the table that Ana White made for that picture must have split into a million pieces too. But she still leaves it on her website (along with other photos taken by proud woodworkers 2 days after they finished the table rather than 6 months later when it’s cracking like mad)??

-- Jeremy, in the Acadian forests

Ana White does not understand wood movement, her designs are terrible that way.- bondogaposis

+1 on that!!

I see two possible approaches here:

1. Plywood panels as you suggest.

2. Use something like Ana White’s Plan B for the top: make the top out of individual boards, NOT GLUED together (T&G would be best, but a full-length spline would be ok too) and attached to cleats from underneath, so the shrinkage/expansion can happen in individual boards, creating small gaps between boards, but not big cracks in the top. (If your wood is bone dry, then leave small spaces—-1/32” or so between boards)

Ana White’s stuff tends to be structurally weak, heavily reliant on pocket screws and such. This particular design doesn’t provide much racking resistance in the pedestal base. Would be better with some shoulders on the rail-to-pedestal connection.

Next time, if you’re going to sell this stuff, sell “as is”

-- Jerry, making sawdust professionally since 1976

Thank you, gentlemen! I’m consulting with them now on the options above, focusing on steering them in the plywood solution.

There won’t be a next time – I’m embarrassed to have my name attached to this situation. Lesson learned!

On a side note, I’m hesitant to say anything derogatory about Ana White/Shanty-2-Chic designs because I wouldn’t have discovered such a reward and PRACTICAL hobby had it not been for them; I’m sure there are thousands of others with that same experience. That being said, some of their “how to’s” are borderline negligent because it would only take a few tweaks to not suck so bad. My favorite was a recommendation by Shanty to NOT use clamps – use duct tape :)