The Hayrake table is done!

After some odd 70 hours of work (or so), the Hayrake table is finally done. Well, almost as I need to make the buttons to fasten the top to the stretcher. However, for now we'll assume that gravity will keep this nearly 100lb table top in place.

The design is based on finewoodworking.com 's design. The difficulty level was "intermediate", which was much warranted by the complexity of the joinery underneath. The $12 design were useful, although I had to wing most measurements to fit the vagaries of working with rough lumber AND getting the table to be a whole 14" longer than designed.

The stretcher is made of hard maple while the tabletop is made of quatersawn white oak (which looks red to me). Milling the oak in all of its 8' length was impossible on a 6" jointer, so I had to improvise and joint on the tablesaw using a 8' melamine shelf as a sleigh (and some weird clamps that I found at busy bee tools). Overall, the table top is fine although I find it a bit rough. I have to say that I learned how to properly used the No.5 Handplane on the job. Some 6 hours of intense aerobic exercise were needed to bring the top to a reasonable flatness. I also had never dealt with such a large surface to finish: two danish oils and 5 Polyurethane coats later, I thing that I'm getting a feel for the process.

Flat and shiny... 

Chloe, ready to baptize this bad boy.

I'm glad to be done and look forward to finish my ambitious TV stand. It is nice to know that this table will be used every days, for decades to come, to have dinner with my family, spill wine, pass the salad, violently roll our eyes, etc.

Here are a few more pictures:

Hayrake table, progress

The hammer and the finger a few days later. It doesn't look
10% as grotesque as I felt when it happened... 

After a week off playing full time furniture maker, I did make a lot of progress toward the Hayrake table. Sadly, wednesday was partially wasted by an accident where I hit my nail as hard as I could with a mortising hammer. The nail tore in the middle and most of the blood drained through. If you never have done this, it hurts a lot. I duly walked to the bathroom where I passed out for about a minute. Strangely, there is very few evidence left of this embarrassing episode as of Saturday night...

The stretcher was a very challenging piece of joinery. It contains two round end-caps, each with three joints at 45 degrees relative to each other. The end-caps connect to two stretchers at 45 degrees with the central stretcher. Pfew, it took me three days to cut all the joints. In the end, they came together without a real fight and I'm now a lot more precise and fast at it. Yet, I added a mortising machine to my dream list of tools. 

With the legs pretending to be assembled.

Some 37 hours later, I have most of the joinery done for the table, and look forward to add the apron, finish the structure with a cherry stain (to match the chairs and China cabinet), and finally tackle the monster job of jointing the tabletop with my small equipment (I've got a McGiver-style plan for that!). My 50 hours estimate for the overall project will be an underestimate, but not by a lot.

Signing off!

Week of woodworking

The stretcher system taking form.

This week is off and the main objective is to get the dining room table done. I don't know whether this is going to happen, but I'll try as hard as I can. This being said, I spent the day with the girls hiking and eating in a fine Japanese restaurant. I rest my case.

The Hayrake table is a nice learning project, rated as intermediate in terms of skills. There is a lot of angled joinery such as these shown on the picture to the right. Tomorrow, I'm getting started on the rounded end-cap, with the most challenging joinery details.

Here is a sample of the stretcher with a somewhat similar end-cap.

A sample of a hayrake table.

Back at it!

After weeks of moving, taking down the tools and subsequently setting them up again, I began working on hardwood again tonight. I'm making a Hayrake Table, which design from from an editor of the Fine Woodworking magazine.  The modification to the basic design is that the structure is made of hard maple while the table top is still made of quatersawn white oak. This will be more consistent with the China Cabinet and chairs that are going to be in the dining room. Another reason why this is so is because I couldn't source anything but 4/4 stock of oak in this cut style, and thus it would have made it very tedious to prepare the legs and stretchers (it calls for 8/4 and even some 12/4 stock).

I spend the best of 1-2 hours with my daughter doing the initial milling of the legs (with 12/4 stock), which was a good work-out for my new roller stand and a good test for the ducts going to the dust-collector. Everything seems to be working as expected. Life is good.

Tomorrow, I'm finally getting a 10" contractor saw from busybee.  The only tool not yet delivered is the DW618K 2HP router that will be the workhorse for a router table. When will this router table be made? Good question, but it is good to know that the most critical component will be in the shop.