Friday, May 4, 2018

A Barnsley hayrake table 2, completing the frame

Just because I haven't blogged lately doesn't mean that I haven't made any progress on the table. Actually on the contrary.
I really dislike sitting at a computer while at home, so I decided to take a new approach and instead just take some pictures of the project as it went along, and then I could blog about it while out at sea.

After completing the mortises and tenons in the center stretcher and the four diagonal pieces, I lined it all up, and marked the positions of the joints for the end cross pieces.

The mortises on the end cross pieces were made using the chain mortising machine but the angled mortises were made using a chisel after having drilled out a large part of the waste using a spade bit.

Once all the joints were ready, they were all tested, including the joints for the legs. I figured that it might be a smart thing to do because it would be easier to tune the fit now compared to when the stretcher was completely glued up.
The surface of all parts were cleaned up with a smooth plane, since it would be difficult to get access to all parts after assembly.

I drilled some holes for the drawbore pegs, dry assembled the construction, and marked out for the tenon part of the drawbore hole. After disassembling the stretcher and drilling the remaining holes, I made some pegs using my dowel plates. The pegs were made out of ash. I tried to split them at first, but in the end I had more success with sawing them on the table saw following the grain. I made sure to make a couple of extras just in case I would break any of them during installation.
I also sawed out some small wedges of ash for the tenons. 
Finally I sawed a couple of thin kerfs in the ends of the tenons and I was ready for the glue up.

Making a Barnsley Hayrake table is fairly straight forward work except for the glue up part of the frame. That part ranges as a complicated glue up in my world. It is very difficult to attach a clamp to help negotiate a joint in place, so all parts have to fit from the start. 
A good preparation with wedges and pegs ready helps, but I still find it a stressful part of the build.

Once the hayrake stretcher was glued up, I stopped for the day to let the glue dry.

The next day I slid on the legs to be able to determine the exact size of the upper cross stretcher.
When I had made those complete with mortises, I marked out the position of them directly on top of the legs. The legs were then removed and the joints were made. 

I then chamfered the hayrake stretcher and did something unusual: I marked the piece with Roman numerals despite the project not being complete! My reason for this was that I guessed that it was a lot easier to do this when I could turn the parts as I wanted them and keep it on the bench. But it still felt like a criminal act to do it prior to completion..

Next I glued on the legs. I had decided to use elm for the wedges instead of ash, to get a bit more contrast on the wedging part. But apart from that it was straight forward. I again chose to saw a thin kerf to have a starting point for the wedges.

Once the glue had dried, the upper cross stretchers were sawed to length, chamfered and glued in place too.

Finally all the remaining protruding parts of tenons, wedges and pegs were sawed off flush to the surface and cleaned up with a plane.



Gluing up the hayrake stretcher.

The legs temporarily mounted.

Legs ready to be glued onto the stretcher assembly

Making pegs using a dowel plate.



10 comments:

  1. Nice! The joint at the top of the leg looks interesting. What kind of joint is that?

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  2. Thanks Brian.

    I guess the joint is a called tenoned bridle joint. But I am not sure. It was the one that was shown in the article by Don Weber in Popular Woodworking years ago.
    There certainly is a lot of glue surface in the joint, and it also seems to be pretty stable.

    I deliberately made the bridle part 1/8" too shallow, I figured that it was going to be easier to bring the top of the cross stretcher down using a plane compared to removing a lot of end grain from the top of the legs.

    Brgds
    Jonas

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  3. Blum dowel plate. Is this the same cabinetry manufacturer? How dry was the stock that you tried splitting the pegs from?

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    Replies
    1. Hi.
      The Blum dowel plate is from the same company that produces hinges etc for cabinets, it was the one that I got as a present during the last chair building extravaganza.

      The stock was really dry, as it is some kiln dried ash I have been given by my father.
      I thin the problem is that I wanted the final split piece to be almost perfectly square and just a little bit larger than the finished peg.
      I used a size of approx 5/16", and I was too lazy to do any sort of whittling before pounding it through the plate.
      But since it was really straight grained I had good success with sawing the stock out.
      I think that I could have gone up to perhaps a 1/2" peg, but I didn't want it to look too massive. In that case I would probably just split it.

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  4. I like how this style of table can work in both a rustic and refined setting. And the joinery is beautiful, looking like the interior of a classic barn

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    Replies
    1. Hi Bill

      Thanks for the nice comment.
      I am still trying to gain momentum to make a couch table with this style one day. And that will have to be a lot more delicate since the table will be smaller.
      The plan is to use one of the sycamore slabs from the crotch of the tree that I milled 3 years ago.

      I think that the angled pieces creates a special visual interest compared to most tables that I see, where the lower stretcher is usually mounted solely using some 90 degree joints. But on the other hand it is also much more time consuming. But as long as the results are good looking I can live with that :-)

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  5. Looks great, really enjoying the joinery on this one. Using a lighter version for a smaller table sounds like a very good idea.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Jeff

      Thanks for the nice comment.
      I am not sure when I will eventually get around to doing that coffee table, but I think too that it be looking good. I just have to make dead sure that the joints are super tight on that one, because I know that I will eb looking at it almost every day. :-)

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  6. Speaking about hay rake, here is another way of making dowels... er, tines:
    https://stevetomlincrafts.wordpress.com/2017/10/10/new-hay-rake-tine-cutter/
    Sylvain

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    Replies
    1. Hi Sylvain,
      I actually remembered seeing that back when he blogged about it.
      That model might be preferable if you have to make a large number of identical pegs/dowels/tines.

      Brgds
      Jonas

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