Cherry Hall Table
I just finished this cherry hall table from Woodsmith
#147. Plans for building this table are also available
from plansnow.com.
It is cherry with curly maple veneer and I finished
it with several coats of Waterlox. This was my
first time using veneer and it didn't go without
problems. I am satisfied with the finished product.
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| It
all begins with the legs. Two 8/4 boards are needed
in order to make seamless blanks. |
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| Each
of these will be ripped in half and laminated for
each leg. |
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| My
40 tooth combo blade cuts well, but obviously isn't
ideal for 8/4 cherry. If you look past the burn marks,
you can see each leg is bookmatched. |
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| I
then glued up each leg making sure the bookmatched
sides were aligned. The blanks are 3.5" square. |
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| I
put in the 28 tooth blade that came with my table
saw and made the first cut on each blank. Notice
that I had to extend the blade guard to accommodate
these thick boards. |
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| The
first cut is done. Could you imagine getting kickback
with this sucker? |
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| The
second cut is made by rotating the stock by 90 degrees. |
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| The
28 tooth blade did a little better than the combo
blade, but still had some problems with burning. |
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| The
plan said to continue and make the third and fourth
cuts on the table saw. I decided to clean up both
edges from the first two cuts on the jointer before
doing that. I made
several
shallow
passes
until
all the burn and teeth marks were gone. I also made
sure the seam was exactly on the corner. |
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| Much
cleaner now. |
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| I
made the third and fourth cuts a bit oversized. Then
I used the planer to get each blank perfectly square.
The knots will be cut out for the final legs. |
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| The
blanks are done! I took my time on these blanks and
you can't see the seams at all. The seams are all
exactly on the corners and bookmatched. |
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| Next,
the legs were rough cut on the bandsaw. |
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| Here
are the rough legs. I used a flush trip router bit
on the top of the legs and a lot of sanding on the
curved bottoms. |
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| After
a lot of careful work, the legs are completed. |
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| I
am very pleased with how the curves turned out. |
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| Mortises
were put on two sides of the legs using a forstner
bit on the drill press, then cleaned up with a chisel. |
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| The
aprons are made out of poplar with curly maple veneer.
The veneer has a lot of figure, but it's hard to
tell from this picture. |
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| Mitered
tenons are put on the ends of the aprons and rabbets
along the fronts for the trim pieces. |
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| Spring
came around and the outdoor projects were in full-force.
Plus, after all the snowstorms we had late this winter,
the last thing I wanted to do was be indoors. After
three months of the aprons being attached to the
legs, I finally got around to working on the trim.
Each apron has four pieces of trim on it. |
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| The
first step of the table top is to attach the curly
maple veneer to MDF. The plan said to use contact
cement, but I've heard bad things about doing that.
So I did some research on the yellow glue/iron-on
method. I applied yellow glue to both the MDF and
veneer and let it dry for about 30 minutes. After
that, I ironed it on with a hot iron. |
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| The
iron-on method worked great until I got to the edges,
then crackola! After some research, I found out that
I should have used techniques to flatten the veneer
before trying this. Too late now! |
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| Joe
from veneersupplies.com helped
me out with my veneering problem. I used his HeatLock
adhesive and Super 20 softener and my table top came
out much better. Here it is with the cherry frame
being glued. |
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| I
sanded everything down and my table was ready for
a finish. Since I made the legs several months ago,
they had darkened quite a bit. The frame on the table
top was quite a bit lighter, so I decided to set
the top in the sun for a while. NOT A GOOD
IDEA! After only 45 minutes, the veneer
cracked in six places! This just made me sick to
my stomach. Click on the image to see the cracks. |
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| Well,
I wasn't about to make a third top, so I decided
to try some wood filler. A local woodworking and
hardwood store has this Timbermate wood
filler which I really like. I filled all the cracks
and sanded. |
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| The
filler worked really well. Here is a picture of the
table with the first coat of Waterlox on it. The
cracks are still visible, but not as obvious. |
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| Well,
here is the finished table in it's final location.
It was a long journey, but it made it. |
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| Here
is a picture taken outside to try and highlight the
curly maple. Pictures just don't highlight the figure
as well. Also, the lighting makes one side of the
frame look darker, but it's from the same board as
the others. |
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| A
few more pictures. |
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