Making A Simple Outdoor Table – Pt 2
Do you ever have one of those moments where you wonder “This ain’t right.” I’m having one of those moments right now as it’s clear that it’s taken me longer to take photos, edit/size photos and to write about this project than it did to build the table. “That ain’t right!”
But here we go with part two of this saga. For those who missed it, you might want to read part one first. At this point the legs are built/assembled and the long aprons connect pairs of legs.
Finishing the Table Base
I cut the short aprons and planed them both to smooth them and to fit them into the notches in the legs. What’s important in this step is that as you fit each end of the apron into its leg, do everything in your power to get the apron square with the leg in all directions. This will determine whether your table base is square or not.
Once you’re convinced the pieces will fit together, it’s time to glue/screw the base together. At this point it starts looking like a table.
If you’ve taken the time to study the design you can see that I have made an error. I forgot to cut the dados in the long aprons that hold the cross-pieces to which the top planks are attached. I was just glad this table wasn’t made of hard maple as cedar is easier to chop. I marked out the dados using a cutting marking gauge, cut the dado sides using a carcase saw, and carefully chiseled out the waste.
Whether you do this at this stage or before you assemble the base, you should work from both sides to avoid tearing out one side. Fit the cross-pieces to the dados and the base is complete.
Adding the Table Top
The top consists of five 1/2″ x 4″ x 36″ boards. I crosscut the boards to length using a handsaw but ripped them to width using my table saw. I laid them out on my table with 3/16″ gaps between them and centered the base (inverted) on them. I attached the top boards with screws through the base cross-pieces using a “hybrid” approach. I predrilled the holes with an electric drill, countersunk them with an eggbeater drill, and then drove the screws with a Yankee spiral push screwdriver. If you haven’t used a push screwdriver for driving screws, give one a try. It’s my favorite way to drive screws.
I used a beam compass and marked out an arc that fit each end of the table. I believe it was around 11″ radius but I just set the beam to ‘looks about right’ and used it on both ends of the table. Then, with an ancient Craftsman jig saw I rounded the table top ends. It gave me a good reason to dust off the jig saw and it was probably feeling neglected anyhow.
That’s it…fini! This would be a good project for those taking early steps into furniture making. I enjoyed the project as it came together so quickly. Though I did use an occasional power tool, mostly I used handtools and darn few of those. The simplicity of the joinery allowed me to create it in 4-5 hours and it could have been done more quickly by someone more interested in “quick” than I am. I painted it light blue to match the chairs I made. Have I mentioned how much I hate painting and how bad I am at doing it? Anyways, here is a view of the table frolicking in its native habitat.
Cheers — Larry
Making A Simple Outdoor Table – Pt 1
When you make Adirondack chairs for your family the darndest thing happens. The family sits in them. Quickly the fact that there is no table in front of them becomes apparent, as I commented here and here.
Quick and Simple Design
The requirements for this small 15″ high, 18″ x 36″ table are small and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it as my vanity cabinets are getting bored collecting dust in my shop and they want me to finish them. Before we discuss the build, let’s talk quickie joinery, Larry-style.
I planned on making the legs by screwing two 2×4 pieces together and so the first “design” question was how to attach aprons to them. Obviously the simple way is to screw them directly to the outside of the legs but I thought I could do better than that. Here was my first idea:
This creates a surprisingly clean design. But, thinking of how low this table would be to the ground, and about the amount of overhanging I was planning for the top, I decided to simplify this approach a bit more and came up with:
Cutting the rabbet in one side and the slot in the other is a piece of cake using handsaws and so I settled on this as the design for the base:
Trying to match the Adirondack chairs, I built the top by attaching slats to the cross-pieces in the base. I decided that rounding the ends would improve the looks so I planned for that as well. If you’re interested, you can download a SketchUp drawing here.
Creating the Legs
I had two cedar 2x4s and half a dozen 1×6 fence planks and that’s what I used for this little table. The fence planks were only around 1/2″ thick. The first thing I did was to cut 8, 15″ long pieces of 2×4 for the legs. I sort of matched them up for grain but since I was planning on painting this hardly mattered. What did matter, however, was that I treated them as pairs, keeping track of the faces that would come together to form the legs. You need to end up with a set of 4 legs with the slots pointing in the proper orientation so burn a neuron or three as you give some thought to how they have to be oriented.
Yes, I could have used a dado head to cut the rabbets. But in less time than it would take to install the dado head in my table saw I used a carcase saw and a tenon saw to cut the rabbets, thus avoiding the time required to get the dado head back on the shelf.
Cutting the notches in the other leg halves was nearly as quick. I just made the two long cuts with the tenon saw and then chopped out the waste using a chisel. Unfortunately, I got involved in the work and forgot to take a photo of the chisel work.
I cut the aprons at this point as I wanted to attach the long aprons before screwing the leg pieces together. What’s important here is ensuring that the structure is square.
With this accomplished it’s a simple matter to line up the two leg halves and screw them together. I use #8, 2″ screws for this.
This post is getting long and I’ve got some more photos to show of the process so I will put them in a separate post in the next day or so. The “hard” work of this project is over, however.
Cheers — Larry
My Adirondacks Have Left the Building
What does this photo represent?
Several things, I suppose. It suggests that:
- My Adirondack chairs are finished and ready for the butts for which they were intended.
- I need to build a table for the pretzel bowl.
- I need a pretzel bowl.
- Clearly I’ve got to figure out how to get grass to grow in an area that’s been compacted by a huge glider/swing that has sat there for a couple decades.
But this photo says something of far greater importance to me. It says, in “shouting to the rafters with glee” fashion, that these chairs are no longer in my shop. They’re no longer in my way. I’m a happy guy this day.
Cheers — Larry
Orbital Sander Is Too Slow For Hand Tool Guy
My last post described me turning to my electron burners to make some Adirondack chairs. There is no doubt in my mind that I saved a lot of time ripping boards with my table saw rather than cutting the same hundred feet with a handsaw. As I said, this was a project about the end result so I sacrificed the enjoyment of the process to get it done.
Well surprise surprise. I learned something about myself and about tool choices. We all have a feeling for how long something should take us to accomplish something. I think this is why a lot of power tool guys think they work so quickly as we don’t tend to count set up and clean up in our time estimates. But I had to chuckle to myself after I saw what had happened in my shop and I thought I’d share it with you.
I had a significant pile of pine pieces that I needed to smooth on both sides prior to assembling the second and third chairs in this series. As I did with the first chair, I took my Bosch orbital sander, slapped a 60-grit disk on it and started making noise. After about 1 1/2 hours I was, maybe, a bit more than half done with this when I said to myself, “This would go faster if I’d just plane the surfaces.”
And that’s exactly what I did. I grabbed my #7 and a smoother and went to work. It took less than 1/2 an hour to finish up my pile of parts. Planing was sooooooo much faster that I regretted not thinking of it earlier. To make the comparison more clear the boards that had been planed were also shiny smooth, whereas those treated to my orbital sander would need another go with 120-150 grit.
In the end, I could have saved myself at least 2-3 hours by planing the parts for the three chairs rather than using a sander. I can’t say if this would have completely offset the handsaw vs table saw time difference but it sure would have taken a huge chunk out of it. Interesting… at least I thought so.
At this point the 3 chairs are ready for paint, and just like it was planned, it’s supposed to rain for the next two days.
Cheers — Larry
Process vs Results And How They Relate To Sitting
One of the virtues of being a woodworker is that you can make stuff you can use. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I don’t take advantage of that fact very often as most large projects I’ve made have gone to other people.
Maybe that’s why I emphasize process as a woodworker. I enjoy working wood; having stuff made from wood, not so much. This emphasis on process has sucked me further and further into hand tool use and away from the electron-burning sort of woodworking. I’ve got things to say about the hand tools vs power tools dialog, that seems endless, but I’ll save those thoughts for another day.
Today I want to talk about shifting from being process-oriented to a mode where the only important thing is the end product. I’m not recommending this; I’m simply reporting on it. It’s what I did 4 days ago, motivated by the fact that our outdoor seating had finally died a rotting death and I needed something to replace it. So process, who cares. End, in this case a place to put my rear end, the only issue.
The saga starts on the Internet, on Twitter to be exact. I asked about Adirondack chair plans as those from Norm Abram’s New Yankee Workshop website have been discontinued. Shannon Rogers and Erik Pearson directed me to Popular Woodworking as they’d done an article on Norm’s chair. For some reason I couldn’t find the issue (August 2005) in my library but for a few bucks and a few button pushes I downloaded the issue from the Pop Woodworking website.
But a decision had to be made. Excepting my planer and table saw, my power tools are shoved into the backwaters of my small shop. Was I going to build these Adirondack chairs using only handtools? No, says I. I’m no purist; I use the tools that work for me. In this case, the project didn’t involve high-quality woods or precision joinery and, for me, it wasn’t even a particularly “fun” project. I would build these chairs (3 in all) from construction lumber and use screws and carriage bolts to assemble it. Let the dust and noise begin.
I began by making a set of templates from my “favorite” material, MDF scraps. Finally a use for this modern abomination. The PW article contains a gridded set of template diagrams and this made it easy to make a full-size set of templates.
Because of my hand tool approach I generally approach projects by rough-cutting pieces (I call this wood selection) and then I cut pieces relative to other pieces as I assemble. With the Adirondack chairs I went the “make a kit” route. My thinking is that Adirondack chairs are not precise construction projects and that careful fitting is not required.
And so the cutting began. I put on my astronaut EVA suit. Some might call it a respirator, safety glasses, and hearing protection but with all this paraphenalia hanging on my head I feel like I’m about to do a space walk. The kit was a result of shoving a lot of 1×6 and 2×6 lumber through my table saw, cutting the curvy bits with a sabre saw (some call it a jig saw), and a whole lot screaming router with a roundover bit. I’ll spare you the details. It was not fun by my definition of the word.
I highly recommend the Pop Woodworking article as an assembly reference as it clearly lays out the process. I just followed their instructions, adding metal to wood until the result looked like a chair. Then came the hard part.
I needed to add wood plugs to the 52 countersunk #8 screw holes. I found I only had 11, 3/8″ plugs in my stash. Not a problem – just run to Home Depot and get some. They didn’t have any. Neither did the many other places I went. You’d think I was trying to locate a mint Stanley #1. Several gallons of gas and 1 1/2 hours later, I’d found some plugs, paid way too much for them, and I was home gluing them in place. Sometimes the hard stuff isn’t where you expect to find it.
And so, one down, two more to make. I have all the wood shoved through the saw for the two more chairs. There’s some sabre saw growling and router whining that needs to be done. As Scarlett O’Hara once said, “Tommorrow is another day.” At the moment, though, I’ve got a chair – it fits my end nicely.
Oh…in the interests of full disclosure, many electrons were sacrificed in the creation of this blog post content. I think they all died peacefully.
Cheers — Larry
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