Rustic Table Design - The Final Product

[Danny Thompson]

Here are pics of the final product resulting from last fall's "Trestle Table Design - Please Critique" thread (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showpost.php?p=943475&postcount=1).

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=108056&d=1232926138

The table is 83" L x 36 5/8 W x 29 H. All boards are 12/4 African Mahogany (Sipo). The long top boards are ~ 9 1/8" wide. The breadboard ends, legs and stretchers are all 5" wide.

As you can imagine, the table is pretty heavy (350-400 lb). To help with portability, the design is knock-down ready.

Loose-wedge tenons (tusk tenons) connect the stretcher to the two leg assemblies. The wedges/tusks are ~ 4 1/2" long, 3/4" wide, and 1" deep at the top slimming down at a 7º angle.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=108058&d=1232926208

The leg assemblies are joined using integral through tenons.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=108057&d=1232926196

And are clipped to the top to allow for wood movement and disassembly.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=108059&d=1232926229

[Danny Thompson]

I experimented with a variety of finish options, trying combinations of dye, oil-based stains, gel stains, shellac, and wipe-on polyurethane. In the end, I went with:

1) One coat of General Finishes Dark Brown Water-based Dye.

Wiped on, and then wiped off about 2 minutes later (for the table top, I enlisted help to wipe off while I was still wiping on).

After letting the dye dry 4 hours, I lightly sanded with 320 to remove some raised grain and removed the dust with a tack cloth.
2) One coat of General Finishes Candlelight Oil Based Stain. (Notice no shellac washcoat before the stain. I found skipping the shellac produced a warmer result).

Wiped on, wiped again to even it out, and then wiped off about 5 minutes later.

Let it dry 8-10 hours. Sanded lightly and removed the dust.
3) 4 thin coats of Minwax Satin Wipe-on Polyurethane. (I've had great success with this finish in the past and it recently received a top wipe-on poly test rating.)

Wiped on in a thin layer, and wiped again from end to end to even it out.

Let it dry 3 hours. Sanded the first three coats lightly with 0000 steel wool to remove any bumps or grit that settled in and removed the dust. The steel wool always left a bit of grey haze, so no steel wool on the last coat, just a good rubdown with a paper towel and, where needed, a scrape with a fingernail to remove minor grit.

Nothing more.
The idea was to go pretty rugged, so we left some torn edges in the final product. We left some handplane tracks. And did not fill the grain. That's it.

[travis howe]

Wow! Very cool man!:eek:

[Keith Starosta]

Danny, that turned out beautifully!! I really like the finish.

Well done!

- Keith

[Jim Becker]

That is outstanding, Danny! You've raised the bar for the rest of us... LOL

[Danny Thompson]

Thanks. It is pretty rough work. Lucky for me, the Mrs.'s tastes in furniture lean rough and rugged.

[Jason Tuinstra]

Wow, great looking table! All the details are just perfect! Nice hefty table. Just right! I love the look of it all setup as well. Great room and nice photography. Thanks for showing it off.

[Brian Effinger]

I must admit, I didn't read the "critique" thread, but I will now. That is an amazingly beautiful table. Wow! :)

[Doug Mason]

I like the style--very well done

[Dustin Cranford]

Very nice. I really love rustic furniture and so does my wife.

[John Keeton]

When one thinks mahogany, rustic is not usually the result. But this project works!! I really like the color, the finish, and the look. Very comfortable and inviting - just the look one wants for a dining experience. Great job!

[Danny Thompson]

Thanks all. The mahogany decision was made out of a desire for a darker wood than, say, oak; grain worth seeing (e.g., poplar was too plain), availability of adequate 12/4, and frugality (e.g., 60% more for walnut).

That said, the grain on this thing was a b- . . . bear! I lost a good month trying to find an adequate surface prep. technique. In the end, My Veritas Low-angle Jack setup with a cambered 50º microbevel (effective cutting angle 62º) and very tight mouth worked for maybe half the boards. Micro-tearout was a problem everywhere. Out of pride, I hated to do it, but, as many of you told me, sometimes all you can do is break out the Random Orbit Sander. In some places, I just left a bit of tearout.

Link to a thread about this problem: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showpost.php?p=954349&postcount=1

[Glenn Lewis]

i love when things i see here inspire me to go down to the workshop and get to work. I've been planning a dining room table for a long time now, and this might just be the inspiration i needed!

beautiful work!

[willie sobat]

Wow! Stunning piece. Nice job!

[Al Navas]

Terrific, Danny! My wife also loves rustic, and something similar may be in the future, to replace the 12-foot table in the dining room.


.

[Danny Thompson]

Thanks, guys.

12-foot table! That is killer! You should look into Edward Alexander's Quilted Mahogany Table. Talk about inspirational: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=88101

[Thomas Bank]

Simply beautiful!

My ex-wife and I purchased an oak trestle table soon after we were married - it was our first major furniture purchase. It was one of the few items of furniture she left me with, basically because it was too big for the house she bought when she left.

I like the style of the trestle table and love the expanse of it. But over the years it has looked more and more "plastic" to me from being mass produced and I've considered making something of my own one of these days.

This table has been filed away as inspiration for when the day comes to make my own!

[Josh Gerber]

Man that is nice! I really like it. Care to talk about the way you "aged" it?

[Danny Thompson]

Thanks guys. How I aged it. Sure. May be overkill, but here goes.

I only did a small amount of distressing. Mostly, I just tried to highlight what was already going on with the wood. Here's how:

1) Buy some character. I bought rough-sawn lumber (two 13' planks and one 8', I think). It had some torn away edges, some small splits in the grain.

2) Preserve as much as you can. I cut the 13' planks into four 6 1/2-footers (these would be the table top). Only one edge of each board went over the over the jointer, and then only enough to get an edge clean enough to create a good reference for my tablesaw fence. Then I took the narrowest 6 1/2" board and ripped it down until I had what I considered a decent mating surface for the long glue-line. I did not cut away the torn, broken-away grain at the top and bottom edge of the joint line. I then flipped the board and ripped a little off of the previously jointed surface as needed to make a decent glue line.

The resulting board established the target width for the other three top planks (9 1/4"). I then decided what 9 1/4" I wanted to harvest out of the other three planks with an eye on retaining as much of the character as I could, and ripped them to width.

3) Nudge the character along. There were several places where the wood was split along the grain line. If it looked like it might snag and pull away in the future, I slipped my chisel unto the crack and tore the wood away, letting it break wherever it decided to. If it looked like it would not snag, then I left the crack in. In addition, I took little care to prevent tearout during the routing and chiseling steps.

4) Don't clean up too much. Okay, here is where I messed up a little. If anything, I took away too much of the character. Notice the bottom side of the tabletop shows a lot of sawmarks. I hand-planed all of those off of the top. That was in the middle of my expedition into the world of micro-tearout prevention. In the end I wished I had left a few sawmarks in the top. A matter of taste, I guess.

To clean up the torn-away corners and edges, after gluing the top together I attacked the rough spots with whatever rasps, files, and chisels I had around, trying to get rid potential snagpoints, splinters, etc. In some places I went too far, and sanded away too much. All you really want to do is prevent the wood from lifting off later, or someone from getting a splinter. Once you are comfortable with that, then STOP!

5) DIY damage in moderation. To compensate for over-smoothing the top, I added a few bumps and bruises, but nothing too major:
-- several (6-8 in all) angled blows from the tips of a couple of needle-nosed pliers (some with the mouth closed, some open a little).
-- a few (3-4) small quarter-circle scrapes with the corner of a thick hinge.
-- blunted each corner of the top with a hammer
-- hit the long edges a few times (maybe twice per side) with a hammer

6) Surface prep. This is tricky. I hand-planed the top with the idea of smoothing the grain and getting it level enough that a plate would not wobble. I used a Jack plane, but where that wouldn't work (or the tearout was low), I followed up with an LN 102 block plane. Both were set up with a 62º effective cutting angle on a cambered blade. Lots of plane marks. Lastly, I hit the entire surface with 220 grit sandpaper in my Random Orbit Sander. Maybe 5% tearout in the end.

I did not plane the legs and stretchers. I tried, but the wood would NOT cooperate. So I hit the legs with my ROS at 120, and then 220. There was noticeable tearout there, on maybe 20% of the grain after sanding. Looks fine for the legs.

Oh, one last thing. Before glue-up, I chamfered all of the edges using four light passes with my LN 102. With all the other planing, though, some of those joint lines went away, so I added them back in using a series of triangle files. In one case, I had to first reestablish the line using a plane blade as a chisel.

7) Finish for age. I picked a dark dye and stain and made sure to get the dye and stain into all the crevices. Since both were wiped on and off, the stain in the grooves, tearout, and holes, etc. stayed behind, leaving them almost black. Light sanding between coats helped highlight and outline these spots.

Don't know if there is a better topcoat out there, but part of the reason I chose the wipe-on poly was I didn't want to brush a heavy coat of goop on top. I wanted to be able to touch the grain.

I think that's all. Does that make sense?

[Josh Gerber]

Errr... What? No it does make sense. All those steps together made one hell of a table. Looks great.

[Prashun Patel]

Nice stuff. Very tastefully done.