So my wife Nicole asked me for a new dining table.
She didn't give me much in the way of parameters other than to
make it out of walnut and make it pretty darn big.
Now, normally, I mean, I guess some people might be inspired by
that. But when I have too many options in front of me,
my brain goes a little haywire. So if you actually want to see
my struggle with this design and how I arrived at the thing you're about
to see here, you can check out the full course at the Wood Whisperer
Guild. In the meantime, I'm going to show you what we did.
What I came up with was a pretty beefy table with ample room for
six people and plenty of leg room, no knee bangers on this one.
But is this a smart design? The reason I'm doubting myself is
because I've never really seen a table like this.
That's not to say that one doesn't exist. I can only say
that I haven't seen it. Normal table bases will feature four legs
and four aprons. But by criss crossing the rails,
we can get away with only two of them and still achieve a nice
wide stance that I'm theorizing will be strong enough for the
job. Well, let's build it and find out. I'll start by cutting out
the legs and rails. By nesting the pieces I can be a little more
conservative with the material. Walnut ain't cheap.
These boards are a very generous eight quarter at over two inches
thick and they're about 10 ft long. So it's a pretty good workout.
Oh, he's a big boy. He's a big boy. These are very thick eight
quarter boards. At the miter saw, I'll cut the board down
and then head to the band saw to roughly cut out each of my four
legs. The rails are just straight so I'll rip those down at the
table saw. Now I can joint and plane all the legs
and the rails down to size.
Before I got my big Felder planer, I was rocking this little
blue beauty made by Oliver. A few people have asked me for a review.
So here's a mini one. It works great. The helical head leaves
a nice smooth surface and surprisingly out of the box,
this unit had no snipe. That's kind of unheard of for this style
of planer. And I'm not sure how, why or even how long it'll last.
But that's what I experienced during this entire build.
The legs will get an angled cut at the foot
that will let the legs sit at 15°. The top of the leg is also
cut with the miter since that's how it's joined to the rail.
And of course, the rails get a miter cut to match.
Now, you can see how the parts will come together.
Time for the joinery. We'll go with loose mortise
and tenon joints on this one. Now, the first person who asked
me, why didn't you use the Domino gets a virtual kick in their
nether regions. I ain't seen a beating like
that since somebody stuck a banana in my pants
and turned a monkey loose. I'll cut the mortises with a router.
And before you even have to ask, I'll be sure to put a link in
the description for the pencil and the white lead
that I'm using works pretty well on walnut.
I'll also link to a video that I did on marking lines on dark
wood if you want to explore some other options. To make this procedure
safe, I'll clamp onto jointed two by six cutoffs as supports these
keep the router nice and balanced and it gives me some additional
runway. Now, I can cut the two mortises using a spiral up cut bit.
The same setup is used to cut the mortises on the rest of the
legs and the rails. Now we can cut down some of the leg off cuts
to make the tenons. You sneak up on the fit with the planer
and then rip to width. The mortises have round ends
so I'll use a router bit to round the edges of the tenon strip.
Because the fit will be super snug, we'll need a place for the
trapped air to go and a few grooves on the tenon face will give
the air an escape path that should make tenon insertion a lot easier.
Now, I can cut the individual tenons from the long strip.
Now hang on for a second for a little safety talk,
notice something sketchy here with this stop in place,
the tenon is essentially trapped between the blade
and the stop, which is usually a recipe for a nice kick back.
So why do I get away with it here? The reason is
because I'm not bringing the blade back up while it's spinning
with the teeth buried, the tenon just vibrates against the smooth
saw plate until the blade comes to a stop only then do I lift
the head up, exposing those teeth. Now, this doesn't 100% remove
any chance of kickback, but it does reduce it enough
that I feel comfortable showing it and recommending it.
So you're telling me there's a chance. Just with the natural variability
of the milling process, it's possible that some tenons will fit
just a little more snug than others. And for those I give them
a pass or two with my smoother and that's really the kind of fit
you want, doesn't need a hammer to go in but doesn't fall out
on its own. Now, we can move on to the crisscross joint.
I was going to call this a half lap, cross,
lap, double notch, do hickey. But I figured criss cross was a
little easier to say. I made the cuts using a sled at the table
saw and a single blade just making a number of passes.
I didn't use the dado stack for two reasons.
First, that's a lot of meat to remove in one go
and having that much dado stack exposed just kind of makes me
nervous. And second, with the sled eating up a half inch of vertical
space. I'm not even sure that my dado stack would be able to reach
that high. Your mileage may vary. One thing's for sure.
You definitely want to use a clamp for something like this
because you don't want that rail to move while it's being cut
and you really want your hands out of the way.
Once I can slide my notch over the rail, I can cut the notch on the second rail
and the fit is snug but not too snug. Looking good. To reinforce
this joint, I'll add a spline on the top and the bottom
that spans across the two pieces using some scrap.
I'll make a little fence that will guide the router during the cut.
High stakes routing baby. Now we'll square up
the mortises with a chisel. And then I can cut some stock for
the splines. And now it's a good time to notch the rails for some
cleats that will allow us to attach the top to the base.
With all the joinery cut I can finally shape my legs.
The inside of the leg gets a nice little curve
And I'll flush trim the edge with my template to make sure
that all four legs are the same. Now, if you're intimidated by
the look of this router bit, congratulations,
you're human. This thing looks like something the terminator 1000
would turn into in order to finish the job.
But if you run the router at the correct speed,
use push paddles and take your time. It should be fine.
The legs look a little blocky to my eyes. So I'm gonna add some
shaping, just the gentle pillow to break up the flat surface.
I use some guidelines for this work, but no matter what I do,
there's gonna be some slight variance. So I can place each leg
onto its adjoining rail and use a pencil to trace the final shape
that should make sure that each leg and rail joint looks perfect
even if it isn't. Something I've been doing a lot lately is rounding
over the edges where boards meet. It gives the piece a cool segmented
look and probably isn't a detail that everyone will like.
But I like it and my wife likes it. I even asked my dogs
and guess what? Neither one voiced a dissenting opinion.
So I'm gonna keep doing it. Time for the glue up.
I'm using Titebond dark here. It's a pretty great choice for
Walnut. If you have any exposed glue lines,
they pretty much just disappear with this stuff. To clamp the pieces
together, I'll use a little miter clamping aid.
I actually posted a video recently about how to make them
and if you want to make a set, you want to check
that out. It's pretty handy to have around. Bust a move.
While the glue dries, I'll make up the cleats
that will secure the top. We'll have one centered screw hole
and two other slotted screw holes to allow for expansion and contraction.
Now we can assemble the base. While I add
glue to the joint and bring the two pieces together.
The top and bottom then received their splines to help lock everything
down. The cleats are then glued and screwed into the notches in
the rails. Once the glue is dry, I can clean up the splints.
And with that, the base is done.
Now, let's make that big honking tabletop. The boards I'm using
have quite a few flaws. To fill all those knots
and cracks, I first start by strategically taping off the undersides.
I need to block the epoxy from seeping all the way through the
boards and blue tape acts like a sealer. Not
that kind of seal. The epoxy itself is mixed with a drop of trans
tint dye to make it a dark brown and seriously try to do just
one drop. It's not that easy. One thing to note,
if you add too much of the dye, you can actually screw up with
the epoxy formulation and it may not cure properly.
So, don't go nuts. Once the epoxy is dry, I can sand back the
high stuff and get ready to joint and plane all of my boards.
Now, even though my jointer is waxed, the walnut just had a tendency
to really grab the table, which is why you see me kind of straining
a little more than normal. And I'm also wearing gloves,
which is something you only see me do when I need a better grip.
Otherwise I don't wear gloves in the shop.
And once again, that Oliver Planer proves its worth making quick
work of these eight quarter walnut boards.
Next, I'll rip the boards down until I have just a little bit
over the 42" width I'm going for. And that leaves me just enough
room to joint each edge before the glue up. After jointing we'll
be pretty close to 42. And by the way, I suck
and I failed to record the jointing process,
but here are all the boards nicely jointed
and ready for glue. Once again, I'll use that Titebond II dark.
Especially on an exposed top like this that's where the darker
glue line can really be advantageous. If you see me glue up big
tops in the past, you probably also saw me,
you use the domino to help with alignment.
That's a great technique. And it's one I highly recommend if you've
got a domino, if you don't just keep in mind
that it's not a necessity. In fact, you can see here,
I'm just adding a clamp at each joint to help keep
that glue up nice and even. An overnight dry time
and this top should be ready for final shaping.
We sand any glue, squeeze out and then cut the ends to square it up.
I want all four edges to have a slight curve.
So I'll first cut away the excess with my track saw
and then use a template with a flush trim bit to make a huge mess
for the long edge. I'll use a half template.
It's easier to make one of these instead of trying to do the full
length. And it also helps me ensure that the curve is perfectly symmetrical.
So now we're flipping the table upside down.
It's not really so much heavy right here, but it's all right here.
Now with a big chunky top like this, it could be fun to have an
under bevel. I'll use a hand held power planer for most of the work.
And then refine with sanding and scraping. In some areas,
nothing works better than a hand plane.
with the top flipped I can begin smoothing the show surface.
Any unevenness in the boards is tackled with my jack plane from
there. I could sand and scrape.
The edge then gets this little baby round over just to soften the look and feel.
For the finish, I'm using a tung oil mixture.
Few finishes bring out the personality of Walnut like an oil.
Certainly not the most durable kind of finish for a tabletop,
but it's food safe, pleasant to work with
and the tables for my home. So I can always do any maintenance
if needed. But truthfully, I probably won't
because that's just stuff that I like to say in videos. With the
finish applied to the top we can flip it over and line up the base.
I'll attach the base using threaded inserts
and connector bolts.
Those will be a little bit more robust and elegant than just driving
screws up into the top. Here's a good joke for you.
How many woodworkers does it take to screw in a threaded insert?
And we can't forget the brand. You know, I've got to make sure
that I never forget who made this thing. Next.
We fire up the Two Dorks Delivery Service
and transport the table to my house. Duggie inspects the leg
and my mom cheers us on. All of its heaviness.
It's my favorite part
and then Abby shows us her sweet nips. So does the design work?
I think so. We've been using it for a few months now
and I really have no concerns even when I push on it from side
to side, I'm not really too concerned about the small amount of
movement that I see. So I have to say it worked pretty well so
well that I apply the same concept to a matching bench which we'll
build in a future video. And that's the story of the criss cross
table. Remember if you want to build this thing
and you need a little more guidance. We do have a full course
available in the Wood Whisperer Guild including eight videos
and detailed plans. Thanks for watching.