okay so I know it's a little late in the season to be building outdoor furniture
the truth is that I started to build this side table back in June while my
workshop was being held hostage by my contractor I managed to sneak in one
weekend and get started on the project but after that the shop was out of
commission for a while all to say it's fall in Montreal and it's getting cold
but hey I finally got to finish this build besides the point really isn't the
table but rather learning to use dowel joinery to challenge myself I used only
dowels for this project and use two different Doweling jigs in the process I
use three cedar decking boards for this build I started by shaving off the
rounded edge on one side to give it a nice square edge and then ripped down a
couple wide boards that will be used for the outer frame and several thinner
boards that I'll use for the slats if you're interested in getting the
dimensions for this build you'll find a link to the plans on my website in the
description down below a couple weeks later I had another opportunity to set
up my tools in the shop I set the stop block on my miter saw to cut all my
boards to length using a stop block is super important for this build to make
sure all your slats are exactly the same length I'll start by making five
individual panels that I'll assemble afterwards I first laid out two stops at
a 90 degree angle and clamped them to my workbench so I'll have a corner to
reference off of I could then lay out the pieces for my first panel to keep
the spacing consistent between each slat I use some off cuts from a 3/4 inch
board that I placed between each slat I'll need reference lines for each dowel
hole I want to make so I roughly centered my ruler and made a pair of
lines on each slat that'll be connected using two dowels it's really important
to number each of the joints to make sure you know which one goes where
otherwise they won't line up when you go to assemble them
okay so like I said I used two different Doweling jigs. why? well I was first going
to use the Joint Pro which is great for panels but I found it almost impossible
to use for thin slats there's really no way to visually line up the jig with a
pencil mark so I ended up getting the Rockler jig that's easy to visually line
up but it turns out that the accuracy isn't all that great one thing that
helps is instead of using the center line and making the two holes at once I
always use only one hole so I use the left hole and the left line only that
really helps with accuracy even though it's more time consuming so one by one I
lined up the line clamped it down to make sure it would move on me and drilled
the holes now when it comes to the slots you don't have much surface to rest a
jig on which makes it unstable so it helps use the other slats as support as
you work your way through them a really important tip if you're going to use the
rockler jig is to make sure you keep one hand on it at all times as the
weight makes it want to topple down to the floor which is exactly what happened
the very first time I used it and cracked the plexiglass a little crazy glue to
the rescue
once all the holes are made I can reach into my dowel bucket and grab some 3/8
dowels to do a dry fit the last thing you want is to realize your holes aren't
deep enough or that the alignment is off when you're in the middle of a glue up
another thing I want to point out is notice how the joints line up nice and
flush at the top here but you'll notice that there's a small gap at the bottom
if you want you could use your table saw to trim the ends flush but I'm going to
leave it as a design feature okay time to glue up the panel's here I'm adding a
generous amount of glue to each of the holes
I added more glue to each of the holes before pushing all the pieces together I
can then add some clamps and add just enough pressure to close all the joints
nice and tight I assembled the four side panels as well as the top panel and then
used a damp rag to wipe off any excess glue so after letting the panel's dry
overnight or in my case a few months I was ready to assemble the panel's I took
the time to label all the adjoining faces to know what's what
it's really easy to get mixed up if you skip this step this time I'm using the
joint Pro jig it's a little tricky to figure out how to set it up so let me
give you a trick grab your panels and position them like
this off the edge of the workbench you should be able to see both labels from
the top once the jig is set up all you have to do is flip the lower panel up
like this place the jig on one end with the panel flush to the edge of the
workbench and then place the other part of the jig on the opposite end of the
panel then tighten them up from underneath I shown before flip the other
panel up into place and rest it onto the jig then use a square to make sure the
panel's line up and lock the panel into place
I really like this doweling jig since it's super-accurate
no need to make lines and then line up the jig with those lines which can lead
to misalignment if you're not dead-on just move the jig along your board until
you've made all the holes you need I also like that it's heavy and it feels
like it's built to last
so after making the holes for all the side panels I did a dry fit to make sure
everything lined up and then got to work on the top panel now the process is
pretty much the same for the two wider sides but there are two sides that are
shorter so to get the positioning just right
I used the adjacent panels as spacers again using my square to check for
alignment after making all the holes I of course did yet another dry fit and
got the panel stuck on the glue up was similar to before first applying glue to
each of the holes I also added some glue to the edges for extra gluing surface
but I went easy since I wanted to avoid having too much squeeze out to deal with
before I call this project a wrap there is still a few more steps to go of
course there's the obligatory sanding making sure to also break all the sharp
edges with some 220 grit paper I also want to add feet to the table so it
doesn't sit directly on the ground so here I'm cutting a few short pieces of
leftover cedar I'm going to mark them all using my combination square so I'll
have a reference line when installing them that way I know they're all being
the exact same height before applying a finish I used my shop vac to remove all
the dusts and also wiped it down with a tack cloth I applied two coats of teak
oil making sure to coat both the inside and the outside hey I hope you like this
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