Pro Woodworking Tips.com

Building a Dining Room Table

Making your own Dining Room Table

Part 2

Back

Once the three inner columns are glued up, the Mahogany segmented bases can be cut and assembled. These will be cut from 8/4 Mahogany, which will allow enough thickness for the carving details.

 After milling the rough lumber, and cutting to approximate length, they will be ripped into tapered blanks, using a project specific tapering jig. The bases will be a 12 piece tapered glue up. These segments have biscuits between them to help align the pieces for gluing, and for joint strength.

Done in this fashion, the grain is not parallel to both edges, since I had boards on hand that were not wide enough to permit it. Normally, I would have cut equal amounts off of both edges, which would result in the grain being parallel, and square to the bottom edge. Since these will have a black dye, or stain, the grain direction isn't as important as it would be with a natural finish.

In order for the segments to be identical, the bottoms needed to be cut to the same width. To do this I made a rather crude squaring jig, and clamped it so the end of the jig lined up with the cutting line of the blade. Since the base is tapered, the bottom edges have to be cut on an angle. I cut at the first piece, and used it to mark where to cut the remaining pieces, so the bottoms would all be the same width. 

Gluing a twelve piece, tapered column isn't the easiest thing I've every done, but using biscuits really helps align the parts. Just be sure to place the biscuits so they won't end up showing when the carving is done. I found it to be easy to glue three or four pieces together, using only duct tape. You can see by the glue squeeze out that a sufficient amout of pressure is applied, using ony the tape. Then I glue the sections together and added a strap clamp, on the final glue up.

To Be Continued...                                                Back     Next