Mettes sister turned 50 this year, and her husband asked me some time ago if I could make a table for her birthday.
They have recently bought a summer house and wanted a slab table of sorts.
I showed him some pictures of the tabletop I made a couple of years ago, and some pictures of the Barnsley hayrake tables that I have made. and he confirmed that it was something along those lines that he would like to give her.
We settled on a family price, and I got the joy of being able to make a complete table this time. Not just the tabletop.
I wanted to blog about it during the build, but given that it was a birthday gift I couldn't out of fear that the surprise was blown.
All the wood comes from the blood beech that I milled a couple of years ago, save for the pegs that I used for the drawbores that are made of ash, and the butterflies that are made of elm.
I had forgotten how much work there is in flattening a massive slab using hand planes, and at one point I considered if I should try to make a flattening jig for a router. But I decided that it wasn't worth the while for just one slab.
A thing I remembered from last time was that it was important to make the breadboard ends before putting too much energy into the flattening. Simply to keep the split parts of the crotch in place. So that is where I started.
As soon as the breadboard ends were in place, a regular workout using a jointer plane with a scrub blade in it was the next task. I switched a little with a regular jointer and going either diagonally or traversing the grain.
The slab had twisted a bit during drying, so one small area in the top end of the crotch kept being about 1/4" lower than the rest of the surface. I decided that it would be a waste of time, wood and energy to remove that much wood from the rest of the slab, just to get everything flat. After all it was an area about half the size of my palm, and I felt that it gave a bit of character to the table.
I made a bunch of butterflies in progressively larger sizes out of elm, just to give a bit of contrast to the beech. The butterflies serve both to stabilize the split crotch area and to fill up the void so you don't accidentally push a dinner plate through the large hole.
Once the butterflies were glued in place, they were dressed down to the surface of the tabletop, and I sanded starting with grit 40 on a belt sander and ending with grit 240 on a random orbit sander.
The undercarriage for the table was interesting to make due to the tabletop not being rectangular. I decided that it would look the best if the legs were sort of the same distance from the edges of the table. To avoid any hiccups, I made some full size drawings of each end, so I had something to work from.
I mounted the two traverse pieces with a tenon through the center, and the traverse piece itself set into the top of the leg (I am a bit uncertain what the technical name of that type of joint is).
After chopping in MMXXV in the lower stretcher, the table got a couple of coats of a wipe on finish (linseed oil, spar varnish and turpentine) And it was moved inside the house to be ready for pick up (and to make a bit of space int he shop again).
As always a challenging and satisfying project. The biggest issues were that he top was heavy and unwieldy, and that it takes up a lot of space during the build.
I clocked my hours, and all in all there is 60 hours of work in the table.
