I took a couple of days off from building the table to make some items for a family auction! Every year my mom’s side of the family has a reunion in West Virginia. There’s an old farm house that my mom’s grandparents owned and that has been in the family ever since. All of the descendants (the grandparents had 13 kids!) partly own it now and take care of the upkeep. They collect donations from the family each year and do some maintenance around the house. As part of that, we have an auction at the reunion with homemade stuff, and all of the money goes towards the house.

There was an old oak tree in the backyard with a tire swing, and swinging there was always a fond memory of the reunion. The tree finally rotted and fell over, but I was able to save a bunch of logs from it around a decade ago. Each year I use a little of it to make some items for the auction. Last year I made a couple of knife handles. This year I pulled out my lathe and turned a bunch of stuff: two pens, a salt and pepper shaker set, a fan pull, a bottle opener, and a screwdriver:

I hadn’t used my lathe in almost a decade, but everything came out great! Got to do some different finishes as well: CA glue for the pens, beeswax for the shakers, and mineral oil and polish for everything else.

Third Coat of Finish + Web Frame

Put on a third and final coat of finish on the frame today. While that was curing I jointed and planed the poplar for the web frame. And then after wiping down the finish, cut and installed everything! I’m on vacation next week, but am in a great place for when I get back. Next I’m thinking I’ll do the legs and then then whole table will be self-supporting:

The little notches at the bottom of some sections of the frame are for the push-to-latch mechanisms that are going to pop the drawers open:

Yesterday I picked up some wood for the legs, cut it down, then glued up 3 together for the legs. These will be pretty beefy at 5” square. Once again, dozens of clamps required!

Last night I trimmed the legs to length and cut the huge tenons on one end which will insert into the table base.

The legs are so thick (5” square) that I needed multiple cuts on the table saw to get all the way through. I made them in a series of three cuts, where the following one was made in the kerf of the previous:

The tenons were cut with a dado stack. The stack is 3/4” wide, and the tenon is 3” long, so it took multiple passes:

The arrows in the corner keep track of where the two tapers are going to go, always pointing towards the center of the table:

Next up will be cutting the tapers on the bandsaw!

I cut the tapers on the legs last night, which has the side benefit of making them significantly lighter! I made a simple jig that holds them at the proper angle when going through the bandsaw, then ran the fresh cut face over the jointer to make them nice and clean. I’ll probably touch them up with a handplane to get the facets to match up across the two cut sides.