In the garage

Okay, not going to go political. Last post is as all I am going to say about recent events. Soooo, moving on. I have been cranking in the garage, trying to get some semblance of a table together. My parents are due in, so we need to be able to seat 6 at the table for dinner. That 30in round table just isn't going to cut it.

Well, to the best of my efforts I don't think I am gonna get it done. Here is where it sits.


Things went together pretty fast.
Say hello to my little friend.

I have avoided biscuit jointers for years. Hard to justify dropping $250 on a one trick pony. Well, Lowe's has had a clearance tag on their display model for a couple of weeks. This one was originally about $100, marked down to $79, then to $68. I took it up to the manager and he dropped it down to $60. Such a deal, how could I say no. I adopted it on the spot. After my last glue up and how the boards shifted, I wanted a little help in keeping things aligned and the biscuit jointer is perfect for that application. See this article if you want to know a bit more about biscuit jointers (what they are and why use them)

So I now had a biscuit joiner. I got to thinking, hey this would be a quick way to attach the aprons to the legs of my table. So I made a test piece. I was surprised at how much beating it took to break my test piece, so I decided it was a strong enough approach. Here is a shot of the joinery.

I wasn't 100% confident, so I added glue blocks to give some additional strength.


Glue up was a bit stressful. To reduce chance of error I glued the short ends in a seperate step, let that cure for a few hours. Then I took those subassemblies and connected them with the long aprons. I used titebondIII, so I had about 10-15min to work with it. I still felt like I was rushing to get it all together. It came together pretty well.


Next day I trimmed the legs to length. Yep, pulled a bonehead. I had left the legs long to be able to trim to length. Well, I got in a rush to taper and cut the joinery and in my haste neglected to trim the legs. So I lopped 3in off the bottom after assembly. No biggie. Busted out my ryoba to hack off the ends, then used a rasp to square the feet back up. I flipped it back upright and planed the top of the legs/aprons into a flat surface for the table top. Look at those nice fluffy shavings on the floor. I am really loving my hand planes these days. I now have most converted over to aftermarket blades. The aftermarket blades are thicker so they don't vibrate as much during the cut. Aren't they cute all tucked away in their drawer...