What's yellow and black and green
and yellow all over?
Microjig, maker of the GRR-RIPPER.
Work safer, work smarter.
The first thing I need to do is cut these two, 10' long boards down to manageable lengths.
By ripping all the boards to 7" wide,
I'm also squaring off the rounded edges.
Since the tabletop starts out as an octagon,
I need to cut all the miters to 22.5 degrees.
I'm cutting these on my miter saw,
then I'll try to get more accurate miters on my tablesaw.
I think I'll be able to get much more accurate cuts using this brand new miter gauge a viewer sent me.
It looks like they are going to fit together really nicely.
Now I need to cut a rabbet on the inside edge of each board.
I'll join the octagon together using pocket screws.
I'm going to glue and screw these all together.
These are 1x4s that I'm ripping down to 3" wide.
I'm going to screw all these boards in from underneath, no glue.
I'm going to start with the center board and work my way to the sides,
cutting each board to size.
I clamped the board in place along that rabbet and that should hold it so I can put the screws in.
I can slide it over and do the same on this side.
The rest of them, I'm going to space using the quarter inch piece of plywood.
PRO TIP!
I discovered it's important to drill a pilot hole in the ¾" board or it will split.
This board is going to need its corner cut off,
and that is a 45 degree angle.
After a lot of trimming and testing and testing and trimming,
I finally got it to fit, just right.
All the edge boards are a little easier,
they have 45 degree angles on both sides.
I spent a lot of time sanding this to level out any of the uneven surfaces.
I'll probably still come back to it and do some finer sanding once it's all assembled.
Here I'm finding the center point and drawing a circle.
I'm building the entire base and legs out of 2x4s.
I'm cutting all the pieces to their exact dimensions using my tablesaw.
I'm going to join all the center pieces together using half-lap joints.
And all that means is I'm going to cut out a large notch, half the thickness of the wood
in each piece.
I can make sure it's centered by flipping the board end-to-end and
using only one stop block as a reference.
Those two notches just interlock.
Without changing my blades, I can cut rabbets on the ends of the top boards.
I'll start the assembly by glueing these cross pieces together.
And I'm also putting some screws in.
I just don't want to put any screws in the middle where I need to drill a hole for the umbrella.
To assemble the base, I'm going to start by attaching the legs to the lower cross brace.
I decided this needed some clamping pressure also, to help draw these joints together.
This cross brace drops down into these rabbets.
These 1 ½" diameter holes are for the umbrella.
The idea here is that the tabletop will rest on this rabbet, rather than on these thinner slats.
The way that fits in there, I don't really need to attach the top,
but I'm going to put one screw in each leg just to make it easier to move around.
I'm using my router to round over the top edge.
I'm finishing this with an exterior, water-based, spar urethane.
I think three coats of that spar urethane is really going to protect this redwood from the weather.
If you'd like to make your own patio table, check down in the description for a free set of plans.
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