Table Without Reservations with Garrett Hack

Participant Information

 

The way I like to teach this table is for each of you to draw your own design — nothing fancy — and then work to the drawing. It helps to visualize the proportions, and makes construction easier (you can work right from the plan dimensions). Draw a top view, front and side views. These are small tables, so don't go beyond about 14" wide and 26" long for the top. Splay the legs about 3°, or whatever looks best to you. Look at my Fine Woodworking article on this table from about 5 years ago.

About choosing materials.
This table looks good in any wood, even combinations of compatible woods such as cherry for the aprons and top, walnut for the legs. My only caution is to choose something friendly so that the work is less about dealing with a wood challenging to plane or chisel, and more about exploring design, details, and what your tools can do. Cherry, walnut, butternut, fir, birch, figured maple if you want a challenge — they’re all good choices. I like the natives, and the dust is generally less toxic.

For the cockbeads, if you choose this path — these are small beads applied to the bottom of the aprons — I would use something harder and with a pleasing color contrast. I like rosewood, ebony, walnut, maple. 3/16" thick, the length of each apron, and about 1" wide. 

ABOUT PREPARING MATERIALS:

Some pre-miling is fine. Plane the aprons to thickness, but keep them wide and long. Same for the top, but keep it a little thick and large, and if you are using two pieces, DON'T glue them together yet. Rough cut the legs if you wish. You could do nothing beforehand, which would be fine. I would much rather you don't mill something than forge ahead and possibly undersize things.

Legs:
They taper from 1-3/16", so your stock should be a minimum of 5/4 thick. A
little thicker wouldn't hurt, but it's more expensive. A blank 6" wide, 5/4
thick, and 26 long works. Higher table — longer legs. I wouldn't  go beyond
30". A little extra wood for miscuts is a good idea.

Look for a blank that's rift sawn, ie the growth rings are at 45° to the surface. They wont all be, but chose this over flat sawn (parallel to the surface) or quartersawn (90° to the surface). 

You could pre-cut the legs, but I'll show you a fast and efficient way to. If you do anything, cut out your legs roughly and slightly oversized. Remember, 1 - 3/16 is the minimum at the top. They taper to whatever you like. 

Aprons:
3/4  - 13/16" thick, (2) 8" long, (2) 11" long (for the table I'll be building), a little less than 4" wide. These have angled cuts on their ends eventually, for the splayed joints.  Everyone's aprons should be the same width (to simplify the joinery) whatever they are, so we'll rip them to some consistent measurement. Leave them long if you are not sure of your table's size.

 

Top:
12 X 18 is a nice proportion. Same thickness as aprons okay. It could be slightly longer, or deeper.  If you add anything to either dimension, then the aprons need to be that much longer as well, or you'll have a wider overhang. How much overhang do you like?

The top can be made from two pieces, which gives us the chance to talk about edge gluing boards. Just hold off on gluing them.

 

Hand tool list

Set of 4 - 6 bench chisels; 1”, 3/4”, 1/2”, 5/16", 1/4” The more chisel sizes you have the better. The blue handled Marples are adequate and inexpensive, so are Sorby, and an even better value are the short handled Ashley Iles from Toolsforworkingwood.com Wooden handles are always nice, but don’t necessarily mean good tools. If you are curious about Japanese tools, buy a couple of chisels to try. I like shorter chisels such as these because my hand is closer to the cutting action. A collection of flea market chisels is fine — and you might find some beauties.

Mallet; make one if you can’t find one you like. The standard hammer type is okay, or a round one shaped like half a rolling pin.

Fine bladed marking knife. Less than a buck and widely available, retractable plastic knives with breakoff blades are great.

Pencil; I find a lumber crayon also very useful for bold marks that help prevent careless mistakes.

12” - 24” straight rule accurate enough to be also used as a straight edge. Longer straight edges are so expensive I joint the edge of a board and use that.

Flat mill file, for making scratch stocks, any size okay, but not worn out. If you want to make other shaped profiles, bring a round chain saw file or two, and if you have them some other file shapes such as needle files.

4” or 6” and/or a 12” square An adjustable square is fine — the blade is a useful straight edge — but so is a fixed square. I carry a 6” square in my pocket for many uses besides checking squareness. Buy the best square you can afford; my first choice is a Starrett.

Bevel gauge. Most are okay, old or new. Older Stanleys and the new Veritas (with the lever lock) are good. A small bevel will work, but a 6” or longer blade is usually more useful. Most important is that the blade locks securely.

Mortising or marking gauge with a fixed pin(s) or knife (technically a cutting gauge). Marking gauges have a single pin, mortising gauges two. Some gauges do both — the beam has two pins on one side and one on the other. Fancy rosewood isn’t important, but check that it feels good in your hand (balanced) and the fence locks positively. A wheel gauge such as one from Veritas and Lie Nielsen (Tite-mark) is very good for a single line.

A #4 and/or #5 bench plane. Some of you will prefer a smaller plane such as a #3, or a wider #4-1/2. This is going to be a tool that you will rely on constantly for a whole range of smoothing, cutting bevels, jointing short surfaces, and on and on. The least expensive are Clifton or flea market finds. Avoid Stanley Handyman and cheaper planes — they will be constant frustration. Older Stanleys can be very good, and will always work better with a thick replacement iron from Hock of Lie-Nielsen. If you can afford them Lie-Nielsen makes superior tools that need little tuning and feel wonderful right out of the box. Buy iron not bronze as it feels better on the wood. Lee Valley makes very well-working planes for less money, they just lack the attractive details of the Lie-Nielsens. A couple of bench plane sizes is a plus; one can be tuned as a smoothing plane, the other for general work.

Low angle block plane. The Stanley and Record will work, but the Lie-Nielsen #60-1/2 (adjustable mouth block plane) is far far superior. They also make a low angle bronze (#102) for less money, but it is not as refined as the larger #60-1/2. If you buy yourself only one new tool for the class, make it the L-N 60-1/2 low angle. If that is beyond your budget, by a Lee Valley low angle block. They're fine too.

Stanley #92, #93 or similar shoulder rabbet plane (#93 is my favorite) New these are fairly rough, but can be tuned to work well, and they can be disassembled into a chisel plane if you need one. Clifton makes a couple of shoulder rabbets (#311 and #411 are the numbers I think) that are good but more money. The Lee Valley medium sized shoulder plane is excellent and a good value. A bullnose shoulder rabbet with a very short sole ahead of the blade is a specialized tool and while it will work, is not the best choice for what we will be doing. The Lie-Nielsen rabbet block plane will also work, but not as well as a shoulder rabbet plane. This plane looks like the #60-1/2 but with a rabbet mouth.

Hand (card) scraper (or the #80 cabinet scraper if you prefer). I prefer thicker scrapers over the very flexible thin ones. One should last nearly a lifetime.

Fine toothed dovetail or small backsaw, $12 saws are fine, such as the KUNZ. Straight handled “Gent’s saw” or “D” type handle work equally well. Lie-Nielsen and others make fine saws with shapely handles, only they are usually a lot of money. Old saws can be wonderful and sharpened to work better than new. Buy a saw that feels good (balanced), that cuts smoothly, and cuts a fine kerf.

My favorite spokeshave is an old Stanley #53 with an adjustable depth of cut, but you’ll have to look to find one from a used tool dealer or flea market. Lie-Nielsen makes two nice shaves — a very small one with loop handles best for very delicate work, and a more robust Boggs shave with a round and flat bottom. I would buy the flat soled version. Veritas also makes similar shaves and they work well. Older wooden shaves and some new ones have blade at a very low angle to the cut, much like a drawknife. These are wonderful shaves, but best for chair work (split parts where the grain follows the surface) and very friendly woods. The higher angled Boggs and Veritas shaves are better for general furniture work.

Sharpening stones.

I strongly recommend that you buy some and start learning how to use them effectively — if you don’t already. This is VERY IMPORTANT, as sharp tools work with less effort and more accurately. If you learn anything this class it will be getting to another level of sharpness with your tools and seeing how much better they can perform.

The question is do you use water stones, oil stones, sandpaper on plate glass or granite, or some combination along with diamond stones. I use oil stones, mainly because that is what I started with, and a diamond stone for coarse honing. Oil stones feel good and I can work with minimum mess, but I sometimes use water stones and I like them. They take constant care flattening compared with maybe three times a year oil stone maintenance. I think the new Norton water stones are very good and what I would get if I were starting out. They are large, wear a little more slowly than KING or other "Japanese" water stones, and cut fast. They come in four grits: 220, 1000, 4000, 8000, either as single stones or as a two stone, 4 grit combo stones that sell for about $100. The new Shapton stones are also highly recommended (1000, 5000, 8000, 12000), but they are a lot more money. Flea markets can often turn up good stones if you are willing to put in the time flattening them (on a diamond stone).

Some people like the sandpaper method, but you still need a fine stone. The same is true with diamond stones, they are not as fine as I like for really sharp edges. Ideally you need stones roughly in these range of grits:

a coarse stone about 320-1000 grit

a medium stone 1000 - 1500 grit

a fine stone 4000 grit

and a very fine stone 8000 grit or higher

My final honing surface is a strop, diamond paste on a cherry block, about 12,000 grit

 

A catered lunch is provided daily.  Vegetarian meals are available with advance notice.  Please contact the school if you have dietary resctrictions; we will do our utmost to accommodate you.  Please feel free to contact Kelly if you have questions.

(859) 986-5540        kelly@kellymehler.com         www.kellymehler.com