Flip-Top Table Base Complete

The table base finish has been completed and the glue up went together without a hitch.  Here's some progress photos...

Dye coat reapplied

Boiled Linseed Oil added

Shellac, Gel Stain & Polyurethane done.

Close-up of the end result.

Corner Braces fit perfectly, no problems.

Base is 29" tall.  Door is 29-1/8" wide (with the door off its hinges)

Next up: (2) 40"x40" table tops.

Barley, the dog & Fern, the fern.

Flip Top Table Lock Miter Legs

I really do not enjoy lock miters.  There's no room for error.  You get one chance to get that shape right and if you mess up, you can't just run it through the router again.

So these aren't perfect, but they're close enough.

After the glue dried, some legs had an open seam.  There's a trick to solving this problem.

Step 1: Stare at unsightly open seam with disdain.

Step 2: Take your burnisher (or screwdriver) and start at a shallow angle to one face of the leg.  Start rubbing back and forth, applying firm downward pressure.  

Step 3: Take another pass at a steeper angle.  Gradually push the wood and glue over.  Do one side, then the other, then back and forth until the seam closes up.

Step 4: After a light sanding, it's pretty much seamless.

5 lock mitered quadrilinear legs done.  Always make 1 extra leg.  You never know when you're gonna screw up.

So yeah, lock miters.  Not a huge fan of them.  It's a fussy, tricky joint that can fail at any moment.  Maybe you set up the router fence incorrectly so now nothing lines up right.  Maybe you set everything up perfectly but there was a huge chunk of tear out that was completely out of your control.  Maybe you wobbled a bit as you were pushing the wood past the router bit so now there's a bump in the profile, preventing the joint from seating correctly.  Maybe you did everything right but for some reason got an open seam during the glue up.  Bleh.

I read one post about a guy beveling the edges of each board before sending them through the router, to minimize the amount of material the bit has to remove.  He seemed to suggest that this minimized tearout, though not 100%.  His lock miter bit must have a different profile than mine.  If I did a 45° bevel it would cut away part of the little tongue.

I don't know if I'll keep using this joint.  Maybe I'll start glueing a few boards together to make thicker stock and do a thick veneer to cover the other two faces of the leg.

I'm just glad this part is done.  Lock mitered, quadrilinear legs are the least enjoyable part of furniture projects lately.  I really hate routers and this has to be the least enjoyable router bit to use.

She's Got Legs!

I figured the legs would be the hardest and riskiest part of the project.  52" lock miters in 32 passes on the router table with only 2" to spare at the end of each board seems like a long run with zero room for mistakes. This is not my comfort zone.  Not only do I hate routers, but I also hate ordering more wood when I make mistakes.

I planned for this by ordering enough wood for 1 extra leg, but in assigning parts to boards we decided the grain on these boards would be better used as drawer faces.  I've got one shot at this so I opted to leave the camera home.

I took a little extra time to make sure the boards were perfectly uniform in thickness and width and that each face was square to all other faces.  After setting up the router bit and fence and making several test cuts on scrap wood I began to remove as much potential for human error as possible.  I screwed a tall fence right into the table top that would prevent my boards from moving away from the router fence.  And I clamped an extra fence that would keep my board from lifting up from the table.  There was enough room for me to push the boards through with a dowel rod, but that's about it.

It was nerve-wracking, but with my brother's help we managed to make all 32 passes without any severe problems.  One board had a tiny bit of tear out on an edge, but that's no big deal.  

The legs were glued and clamped, sanded and planed to square again and ready for joinery.  In short order, I drilled the mortises for the skirt and backer board nailing strips.  Overall I'm really happy with how the legs turned out and am glad to have this step behind me.

Problem #1: I cut the skirt rails using the dado stack and they ended up 1/16" too short.  Into the scrap bin!  I made another set by hand and they came out fine.

Mitering the ends of the tenons was no big deal.  I used my crosscut saw and watched the reflection of the wood in the saw plate to make sure it looked like a 90 degree corner.  Easy peasy.

Problem #2: I used the router plane to make all of the tenons uniform in thickness but something must have slipped because it removed more material from one side than the other.  I'm not really sure why, but it's alright.  A couple tenons are a little loose, not a huge problem as they'll be drawbored anyway.

Then I began the top frame that holds the legs at the appropriate distances.  My first set was 1/32" too short and I was having trouble getting things square in a dry fit, so I made an extra front piece and that seemed to solve the problem.  I cut the tails first, clamped everything together and, once square, marked the pin locations on the tops of the legs.  From now on I'll just take my time and make sure the shoulder cuts are as accurate as I can make them.

I used the rip saw to define the outer edges of the pin sockets and then just chopped away with a chisel to clear out the waste.  No big deal.

Here's a couple pics of the progress.

The Death March Begins

I've charted out every step I need to take to complete this project.  I took 3 days off of work last week and worked on it for at least 8 hours each day and I've still got about 3 weeks to go.  Sigh.

I spent some time getting the tongues to fit into the corresponding grooves.

I resawed, reflattened, and glued up the bookmatched panels.

I made my first quadrilinear legs :-)

In hindsight I should have used oak for the core.  Looks neat though.

Finished up the leg joinery (mortises, through-mortises, stop-grooves)

Make sure you know which leg faces which way. 

See the triangle inside the square.

[No photo]

I made all of the tenons on the table saw with a dado stack and fine tuned them by hand.

The first dry fit!

Arcing the Skirt Rails

And then I completely screwed up the lid.

I resawed an 8.5" wide piece of 4/4 oak, but forgot to edge joint it first.  The boards cupped immediately and were a pain to joint in unison afterward.  The substrate - also 3/8" thick and cupping - wasn't cooperating either and the entire glue-up, using every clamp I own and the heaviest and flattest objects I could find, still wasn't enough to create a flat lid.

Stepping back to clear my head, my brother Nathan helped me figure out where I went wrong.  Why the hell am I glueing four 3/8" planks together at the same time?  A cupping 3/8" thick board can't easily be glued into a panel by itself, and this is just the first part of the problem.  I don't have a stable, flat substrate to press my veneer onto.

And speaking of veneer, I don't need to have a 3/8" thick veneer.  A thinner 1/8" sheet might actually be easier to handle and press down.

So I'm ordering more wood so I can attempt to do a better job of this.  I'm going to glue together a solid 3/4" thick panel and square it up to be the final size of the bench lid.  When this is dry and flat and stable I'm going to edge joint and resaw another 8.5" piece of oak into a much thinner sheet and press this veneer down onto the 3/4" substrate.  Once that is dry I'll trim off the edges and we should be good to go.

It wouldn't be any fun if I didn't make a few mistakes and learn something along the way.