Hi,
I’m looking at building the table shown below. It is going to be a TV table, with the idea that it could be used elsewhere in the future. The woods are going to be Alder (possibly walnut) and Curly Maple. I’ve made lots of things, ranging from boxes to all the cabinets in my kitchen. I want this project to use nice joinery and be well thought out, and frankly, it’s stumping me. I’ve attached the Sketchup file (shows as a .tif, but I had to name it that to upload it, just change it back to a .skp) shows the basic form, none of the joinery has been designed yet, but I did try to orient the grain on the larger faces the way I’m thinking. Here are the things that concern me most:
1. Wood movement. I’m not sure how to connect the partial shelf to the legs and apron while still allowing for movement. I don’t want to use plywood. I thought that maybe if I oriented the grain all the same direction the whole peice could expand as a unit and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. But this means that I have the grain running vertically on the side aprons so the tenons would be weak…right? I have some stretchers that hold up a shelf. These would have to have the grain running horizontally to not just break. Would this completely mess up the concept of the whole piece expanding as a unit?
2. Joinery. I can think of lots of ways to make all this happen, but I’m not sure of the best way. I want to avoid screws and only use classic joinery if possible. Mostly, how would you attach the table top so that it isn’t ugly in the little partial shelf and allow room for the drawers to move?
I’m sorry if I use incorrect terms or am just confusing. I’m just an amateur and have no one I can turn to that has experience with this kind of furniture. Thanks in advance for your help.
Nick
Replies
My approach for the side rails (under the top) would be to run the grain from leg to leg, as normally done. Under the shelf, I'd run a narrower "rail" between the legs, grain direction matching the rail under the top. The shelf I'd make sufficiently narrower to allow for seasonal movement between the legs, and only secure the shelf to the supporting rails at the same one point on each side, perhaps just behind the front leg, perhaps at the midpoint.
I like the top and bottom drawer dividers to be 3.5 or 4" wide. Some notch for the front leg; I've grown to like a method described in a FWW article several years ago to glue "doublers" to the top and bottom of the side rails to be flush with the inside surface of the legs. Then the drawer dividers can be milled to the same length as the rear rail, then joinery added for the dividers. with a dado in the back edges of the dividers, runners and kickers can be run to the back apron rail.
To attach the top, one can use Z clips, figure eights (both carried by Rockler and perhaps others), wood buttons, as all can accomodate seasonal expansion and contraction of the top. They connect to the top drawer divider and rear apron rail; some may also use the side rails, depending on the overall width of the table.
This may sound confusing, but there's a lot to table design. Some woodworking books should provide details and pictures using these terms.
I think Don has given you some good ideas. Let me chime in with a few thoughts about details. For example, I see that you have inset the rails and drawer fronts from the legs, leaving a reveal. To me that's just a factory short cut, so mortises and tenons don't have to be very accurate. It's a lot nicer if they are flush with the legs. You can lay them out individually so they match, and then if they are off a 1/64th after the glue up, a few passes with a hand plane or ROS will bring them flush.
It looks like you have gone to some effort to lighten the visual weight of the top, but it seems the legs are a bit on the beefy side, thlugh that's hard to see in the drawing.
By the way, it is very much classic joinery to use the clips or figure 8's to attach top to rails to accomodate movement. Masters in the eighteenth century might have used sliding dovetails to do that, but that calls for a lot of extra structure that your design wouldn't accomodate. And letting the shelf float on a rail between the legs makes a lot of sense. You can use "Sagulator" to estimate how much gap you need to allow to handle your worst case. The shelf doesn't seem terribly wide so it won't be very much. You could let it move within notches in the legs, but I don't think that adds much except a lot of work. .
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