Cherry trestle table

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Comment by thetoolnut on July 31, 2012 at 6:24pm

This is a cherry trestle table i finished Today, it's taken me around six Weeks to finish it. It's based on a trestle table that Norm Abram built on the new yankee workshop. His table was eight feet long and around thirty inches wide. Mine is tailored to our small kitchen, it's six feet long and thirty three, three eights of an inch wide and thirty one and a half inches high and even at that its a bit big for the room. Originally i was going to make it no longer that five feet but that was a lot of waste from an eight foot lenght of inch and a half cherry that costs around forty Euros a lenght. The most challanging parts of the table were the mortices in the trestle ends and the shaping of the feet. I have neither bandsaw, drill press nor bobbin sander. The mortices in the trestle tops were done with a router and a half inch diameter lock morticing bit, a fence for my 2-1/4 hp Makita router would have been very handy. I had to creep up to the line once i had plunged from both sides with the router to complete the mortice. The through mortice in the trestle tops was five and a half inches so it was a real challange without a drill press with a morticing attachment or a dedicated morticing machine. Sadly along with a bandsaw all three are outside my budget for the foreseeable future. Norm's tusk tenons were elliptical in cross section as apposed to mine which are rectangular. This was a mistake as i had squared the tapered mortices before making the tenons, they say every good piece of furniture has a few design changes along the way! I had to make the tapered mortices free hand with a cordless drill, they tured out fine. After adding the breadboard ends i sanded everything with 80, 100, and 120 grit wet and dry paper and finished the table with three coats of oil based varnish which was thinned down with white spirit. I sanded the first coat with 400 grit paper and after the last coat had dried i sanded with 600 grit paper for a glass smooth and very durable finish. I hope to get many years service from this table. Now does any major tool corporation want to sponsor me and donate a bandsaw, floor standing drill press and a bobbin sander? 

 

P.S a round and flat bottomed spokeshave would be handy as well!