Welcome to David's Woodshop |
Here is a coffee table I am working on. |
The rough lumber. Note the 16" wide board on the right, and the 3" thick board beside it. |
The design in progress. I never use plans. When I make a table, I always start with the top and design the rest of the table based on that. The top is a single 16" board, but I had a major problem with it. Once I started planing it, a knot right in the center of the board fell out. A family member suggested I inlay a band of walnut down the center. I inlaid a 3/4" band down the centre and one 1/4" strip 3/4" in from each edge. The legs are NOT laminated, they are 2.5" thick. solid ash. |
Glued up, ready for finish. I arched the skirts, added slats in the ends and a lower shelf |
Here is the finished table. I started with a Dark Mission TransTint dye, then a couple of coats of boiled linseed oil thinned 50% with mineral spirits. The topcoat on the base of the table is brushed on 3 coats of semigloss poly thinned 20% with mineral spirits. Once dry, the body was rubbed out with Lee Valley 0000 steel wool (MUCH finer than hardware store BullDog 0000 steel wool). The table top has 8 coats of full strength semigloss poly. Since it was brushed on it had lots of dust nibs and it took a lot of work to get it to its current state. I block sanded the top with 220 to make it flat. With poly, each layer is a layer unto itself, it does not bond with the previous layer like shellac or lacquer. As such, when you sand through various layers, you get boundary layer marks that look REALLY bad. To get rid of them an bring back a shine I did a full rubbing out of the poly. First with LVT 0000 steel wool, then with a lube of 50/50 mineral oil/mineral spirits I rubbed out with 2F and 4F pumice and lastly with rottenstone. Normally I don't use poly, but I needed a bullet proof finish. I had heard that poly was hard to rub out, I found it very easy. |