Project: Rustic Kitchen Table Base and Natural Edge Top (Build)

[Ron Citerone]

Sadly, after milling the cherry, I've decided I'm not going to be able to do the live edge thing because it's too deteriorated. The wide board for the center also had a few defects that I wouldn't want to appear in the table So I've added some more material and will do a more traditional, multi-board glue-up with a chamfered edge. The good news is that I was able to obtain a nice, stout 1.625" thickness after getting rid of the bows in the material with about ten-billion passed over the jointer. Sheesh! My arms sure got a workout with that!

Sorry to hear, but that's the way it goes with wood sometimes. Traditional is OK too, will be watching the progress.

[Patrick Walsh]

My opinion is with that base get a new slab.

Please dint take offense to me saying so. Save the cherry for another project. I think the base needs the rustic look of a heavy live edge slab to pull it off.

You didn’t ask for my opinion though so I hope I don’t just insult and or piss you off.

[Jim Becker]

In an ideal world, Patrick, I'd do exactly that and I take zero offense at the suggestion. I also agree that a big, natural edge slab would be ideal from a design perspective and that was the look I was going for, especially living here in the land of Nakashima. (the Nakashima "compound" is about 5 miles from my house) My bank account, however....being retired and all that...says to use the material I have. At least for now. But I'm certainly checking into other possibilities before I glue things up.

[Jim Becker]

I have a plan that somewhat "splits the difference". Ideal? No. But I think it's going to work for for this particular table.

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The "natural" natural edges on the 20" board were too far gone from very old insect damage, etc., but I still prefer that look. So I use my Festool jigsaw with the base angled and a 150mm blade to "follow the line" of the original edge and remove the damaged stock back to good lumber followed by some work with the Rotex to recreate the "natural" edge. I have some more work to do on that to make me happy. Honestly, it doesn't look hokey at all. The biggest downside is the loss of the sapwood's lighter color, but I have some ideas around that that will require a little experimentation. To a purist, this is most certainly an abomination, but for my daily use kitchen table, it will do just nicely. I cannot fund an alternative slab at this time since just yesterday I had to pay my daughter's spring semester tuition bill.

[Malcolm McLeod]

... for my daily use kitchen table, it will do ...

I built a live edge coffee table, with wild edge and even dormant branch buds exposed after the bark was polished off. Beautiful stuff (IMHO).

But that said, it was a coffee table - - not a kitchen table. I would NOT want to 'belly up and chow down' to the broadly tapering edge of my table. I think your 'user' will work just fine.

[Patrick Walsh]

Well Jim I understand, well kinda or maybe not as I’m light years form retirement although I surely should be preparing by now. I’ll work till I fall over the way I spend.

Imop you doing great to be retired, have the shop home free time and ability to take care of your family “tuition” as you do. Your a much better man than I.

I’d be screwed if I had all that responsibilit....

In an ideal world, Patrick, I'd do exactly that and I take zero offense at the suggestion. I also agree that a big, natural edge slab would be ideal from a design perspective and that was the look I was going for, especially living here in the land of Nakashima. (the Nakashima "compound" is about 5 miles from my house) My bank account, however....being retired and all that...says to use the material I have. At least for now. But I'm certainly checking into other possibilities before I glue things up.

[Dan Friedrichs]

How did I miss this thread? Incredible work, Jim! What a fantastic table base. I'm also planning a dining table build, soon, so this is invaluable inspiration...

[Jim Becker]

Thanks for your kind words, Dan. Like I mentioned earlier, I have been wanting to do this table for a long time now. Professor Dr. SWMBO's grandmothers' "Duncan Phyfe" dining table is really getting long in the tooth and the fold-up ends that are necessary to get to the size we need don't like being co-planer with the rest of the table and since the top is unsightly, we constantly have to use a table cloth which gets dirty way too fast because of both the humans and our birds. So I'm looking forward to putting this wee-beastie in its place. I have a small client project that I have to get completed and then I can get back to working on this table top.

[Phil Mueller]

Very nice solution on the top, Jim. I think it looks great. I suppose some sort of sealer to keep the edges lighter than the rest is swirling around in you head...I look forward to seeing what you end up doing.

[Jim Becker]

In-between working on a small client project and some other things, I got a little more work done preparing for gluing up the cherry table top. The first task was to deal with a "neat" knot hole in the center board. I don't really want to fill up a hole that's 1.625" deep and about an inch in diameter with epoxy so inserting some cherry scrap into the bottom side of the board to take up some of that space seemed like a good idea to help mitigate the deep hole. Once again, I turned to the CNC because it was a super fast and accurate way to route out a .75" deep recess in the back of the board and make a matching plug/insert to fill it back up again. I mean...I drew a box with rounded corners on the screen and more or less said "cut this". And it obeyed me exactly. Gotta love an "employee" like that. Including setup time, this took a whole ten minutes to complete including applying glue and whacking the plug in with a dead-blow hammer.

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From there, it was time to use the Domino to cut some holes referenced to the top to aid in keeping the top side as level as possible during glue-up. This isn't for strength at all since the glue will do an admirable job keeping things together; rather, three 14mm Dominos in each joint just make the glue up task easer. Since my bench was taken up by the client work, the CNC spoilboard got the nod to hold the table top pieces (blasphemy I know...) while the Domino tool did its thing. Two clamps in a tee track held a stop fence to push against. It was actually a nice setup and at a good working height, too. So at this point, I'm ready to glue and will hopefully get to that in the next few days. I may setup some temporary work surfaces to hold the client project pieces (they are being finished) so I can glue up the table on the workbench and keep the CNC free to work on other things. Multitasking does require multiple work surfaces it seems...

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[Jamie Buxton]

Jim, if you're going to synthesize a live-edge look, I find a wire brush wheel on a 4" right angle grinder does a good job of texturing the edge. It doesn't 100% reproduce the texture of a real live edge, but it makes a texture which is quite different from a sanded/scraped surface, and that's what you want. You can buy wire brush wheels at Home Depot near the welding tools.

[marlin adams]

Understand about building more room because my family grew and WoW your table.

[Jim Becker]

Jamie, I've debated about texturing the edge or not and I do have the type of wire wheels you mention. That decision comes down to comfort, however. This is going to be a daily use (multiple meals per) surface and that becomes an important factor relative to the edge treatment. Right now I'm inclined to keep it smooth, but I'm toying with the idea of faux sapwood via bleaching (to replace the damaged material I was forced to remove) to at least give a visual clue. I have to do some experimentation before I make that final decision. While I'm anxious to complete the project and finally have the table in place, I'm not going to rush to the finish line, pardon the expression, too quickly so that I can figure out what will be the best thing for the circumstance.

Update...a friend on Camheads suggested that I might fill the top with a wood plug that matches the knot hole with the CNC. It's an interesting idea, so I took a rubbing of the hole and am playing with things in software to see if I can create an acceptable result. To avoid any damage, I'm going to make the male plug first and see if this is actually a viable idea.

[Jamie Buxton]

... faux sapwood via bleaching..

When I've tried that, the bleach wicks from where I want it to where I don't want it. I tried two-part wood bleach, which is pretty watery, so the wicking isn't a surprise. I don't think there's any reason bleach has to be runny. Perhaps there is some bleach out there which is more like paste? Or.. I've seen ads for household bleach which says "gel". Presumably it gets diluted in its intended usage, but maybe it could just be painted on wood to do what you want?

[Jim Becker]

Yea, that's what I was worried about, Jamie...bleed. I will experiment on scrap, but I have my doubts.
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In other news, I did decide to go forward filling that knot hole with wood rather than epoxy...'just because I could do it with the CNC and it would be a fun way to spend the afternoon rather than watching the oil based finish dry on my client's project. (I really don't like using the stuff, but I have to use what she used so everything matches)

The first thing I did was take a rubbing of the knot hole opening so I had something to scan and work with in the computer. Some careful positioning references were established at the same time so that I could make sure the cutting happened in the correct spot on the board.

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The rubbing was indeed scanned to JPG, brought into Photoshop to clean it up and then imported into VCarvePro so I could create the (initial) toolpaths fort the pocket and the plug/inlay. Given I didn't want to experiment on the real board, I set things up so I could cut the shape in a piece of thin plywood first and then overlay that on the board to see how things matched up. That was a very good decision...while the position was pretty good, the knot hole has a slope to it and I determined that I had to offset things up size-wise a bit to insure that the wooden plug/inlay that would be shaped the same as the knot hole would have a nice secure pocket to sit in. The lower left corner of the plywood is also indexed to the reference line I created while doing the rubbing earlier. That would be my X-Y zero for cutting the real deal later on. You can see here that the shape is what is needs to be but slightly larger than the original knot. Keeping the shape means it will work into the surrounding grain pattern reasonably well. Do note that I know it's not going to look "exactly" like the original knot, but that's just fine.

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From there I cut a whole series of sample plugs from thin walnut scrap, gradually sneaking up on the contour. I had to make both sizing adjustments as well as do some node editing to satisfy my desire to have the plug as close as possible to the mortise. The reason the tweaking was needed is simple...the .125" bit has a given radius and that slightly altered the shape from the vector created from the scanned rubbing, especially after it was up-sized a little as noted previously. Being able to slip each subsequent sample into the thin plywood test piece made it very easy to see what needed to be done node-editing the vector. This didn't take a huge amount of time, was a good mental exercise and I'm very happy with the result. Cutting each sample only took about a minute each. There's a tiny, tiny bit of gap but given the plug would be glued in, I wasn't worried about it at all.

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While I originally though to make the plug out of walnut for contrast, I realized that over time, I'd end up with the opposite coloration that I wanted because while cherry gets darker with time and oxidation, walnut gets lighter. So I grabbed my "exotics" scrap box and found a nice nominal half inch thick piece of purple heart that would work out just fine. Yea, it's purple initially, but it will "brown out" a bit and stay dark over time. I may help it a bit after the top is sanded, too, with a little finishing creativity. Cutting the plug was easy...I just fastened the piece down over the spot all the samples were cut from, adjusted for the thickness and did the deed. A couple minutes later and I had my final plug.

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