Heres another table from the end of 2020. My mom's dining room table has always been a cramped affair for holidays and sunday dinners. In addition, this table dated to the late 40s or early 50s and was somewhat run of the mill production quality. It was my grandmother's. It developed a sag over the years, and the one leg began to separate from the aprons. Anytime my siblings and i expanded/collapsed the table, my mom would berate us with, "remember, it has a bad leg". This went on for years and possibly decades before my mom asked me in September to make a table to replace it. What do you want it to look like? I dont know, you choose. What species? Whatever you think is best. With this utter lack of direction, i started looking around for something that would fit in my parents' mix of family pieces stuffed in their dining room. Every existing piece is either cherry or mahogany, so i knew sapele would be my species of choice. As for the design, i saw a few tables that i liked, and i kept it pretty simple. I was fortunate that my local wholesale yard had a full pack of 8/4 sapele that were 14'+ lengths. I say 'fortunate', because typically a full pack is 1-2,000 bdft. This pack was the perfect length and thickness, but only 500 bdft and at $4.05 a bdft for the pack. After i picked through the pack for my material, i sold the rest as a slight premium.
For the top, i knew i wanted the leafs/extensions to be absolutely seamless with the main table top. This lead to obsessing over labeling during my initial selection and roughcuts. Its not often i break out my festool TS75 to make these cuts, but i did to minimize the loss of material via out of square freehand circular saw cuts. After that, i continued with my OCD by tracking each board's edge and how many passes at the jointer etc. I didnt want me glue joints to be mismatched, nor did i want the grain to be off by 1/8-1/4". It paid off. While i do not have finished photos of the whole thing assembled--thanks, COVID--the extensions line up perfectly. The unfinished photo shows this, i hope. After assembling the top, i wanted to work in a long sweeping curve. My wife and i experimenting via facetime with several colors of chalk, and we settled on a general radius. I do not have a 13-14' drawing bow, and i had to mill an excess board just to rip off a 1/4" strip. With a series of quick clamps and the help of my wife, we drew on the desired curves. I had to cut these with my 20v dewalt jig saw, because the pieces were simply too large to cut at my bandsaw. Yet another scenario where i wish i had the insanely expensive Mafell bandsaw. My jigsaw cut was 1/16-1/8" away from my line, which allowed me to come back with a block plane and no4 to refine the line. With the table top and extensions complete, i assembled the three pieces together to have a look. I liked the shape, but felt the top needed some 'thinning' and more refinement. I experimented with a french curve for awhile, and started shaping. I know this sounds somewhat simple, but i probably spent 8 hours shaping a large roundover on the underside of the table's edge. The emmert's came in handy to hold the main top in place as i worked the profile back to my line. I then wrapped this corresponding profile onto the outside three edges of the table top extensions. Finally, i pre-assembled the table base and extensions together prior to final sanding. This way, slight discrepancies in the top surface and edge profiles blend together. The extensions slide into the stretchers of the table base. There are two forks that i lined up with the underside of the table with epoxied threaded inserts. I laid things out so the extensions can be stored underneath the table top. The top occupied 70% of the labor in the build.
The base is pretty simple. The legs are laminated 8/4 and taper from roughly 4" square to 2.5-2.75" square. The long rails/aprons connect into the legs via a large dovetail. I hogged out the waste of the socket at the drill press and then spent forever paring it to perfection with a chisel. The tails were done in minutes at the bandsaw with a 7° jig. Finally, the stretchers connect to the legs via 4 homemade 14mm dominos.
The table is absolutely massive. Its a smidgen over 13' when fully assembled, and 108" in its base configuration. The width is 42" in the middle that tapers to 35-36" at the extent of the extensions. It is a taller table at 32.5". My mom has some chairs that are an unusual height, which lead to the table top height being unusual. I very much look forward to having dinner again inside with the family and getting to see my completed work. Ive only seen it in pieces next to itself.
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Originally Posted by John TenEyck
