A Square Deal (49)

I know, I know – doesn’t he ever blog about anything else? I hope this table series isn’t wearing anybody out. I will say that the build has been wearing and stressing me out, but today a corner was turned.

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Last task on the side table, other than a last round of going over the finish, is the fitting of some new drawer stops. Here’s one:

I made these a little taller than the previous ones, and used slightly longer stainless bolts as well. They sit in a shallow dado and have a little less than 1/8″ of back-forth adjustment.

Here’s the other:

The rear demountable panel can now mount, and with a ‘snap’ the tabs lock it into place at each side:

Done:

The other side:

How about a closer look?:

They are fairly discrete I think, but if a repair person was observant they would be findable (I hope!).

With that, I turned my attention to the coffee table.

I commenced Round 1 of polishing the top, and after an hour or so, it was looking ‘mo’ better’:

It came out pretty well, taking the Micromesh out to #4000, however I can see a few areas which will need to be addressed in Round 2.

Then I polished up the posts, stretchers, and aprons for another hour or so, again, up to about #4000. Then it was time to put some stuff together – here, the final two stretcher connections are being made:

A closer look never hurt anyone:

I use rectangualr pegs as that cross-section makes them a little stiffer in the direction in which they will be loaded. Just following the principle of apportioning mass to resist the load.

When connected, the pins just pass along the inside of the stretchers – I configured the pin mortise layout and the sizes of the parts so as to achieve this result:

Haven’t decided yet if I will trim those inside pins or just leave them long. The pins so-configured can thus be readily tapped out to disassemble the table. Part of the design process for me is thinking carefully about such details, wishing, obviously, to situations in which that overlooked detail comes back to haunt me, as such invariably seems to happen if I don’t think through the details. It would be all too easy to make the pegging an afterthought and end up with a peg that is driven into a mortise which is blind or partially blocked on the exit side.

Time to put those last two pins in to the legs:

I clamp them first just to make sure the stretchers will have tight shoulders when they are in all the way. Then I just leave the clamps in place while tapping the peg home as it slightly decreases the work the peg has to do. The tenons are draw-bored. I would never clamp an assembly up and then drill for a peg, as I consider that poor practice. Ditto for gluing pegs for such connections – completely unnecessary.

Done:

Of course the pins will get trimmed off later.

On to the apron, which also has a pinned, draw-bored connection at each corner:

Trimming the pin is effected by a kugi-hiki nokogiri:

One corner after the peg is cleaned off:

Another corner:

These pegs are concealed in the piece, but I like to finish them off cleanly all the same. It just take an extra minute or so, so why not?

The apron ring coming in for its descent into base:

Down:

Close up of one corner:

Next, the post tenons are wedged, so as to lock the apron-post assembly tightly together:

And that brings me to the pillow blocks. The middle ones, sweet innocent creatures that they are, are configured like this to fit on the breadboard end sides of the apron :

They go in like this – well, at least part way:

But I’m not installing it quite yet. I need to chamfer the lower ends of those drawbars, and the corner pillow blocks need a round of polishing. I’ll tackle those things tomorrow and should be able to get the top on as well.

On my drive home the machinist rang and told me he would have the leveler feet ready tomorrow as well and would drop them off in the afternoon. Looks like I will meet my self-imposed deadline of the 15th after all. Yay!

All for this post – please have a look around other posts if the above has been of interest. There are 772 other posts to peruse, so pull up a chair and a cup of tea. One more? Post 50.