I cut the rabbets in the drawer fronts and grooves in the sides to hold the back:
I haven’t quite figured out what to do about the bottoms yet, but I’ll need to cut a groove for those as well, probably tomorrow.
I originally planned for Saturday to be the day to finish up the drawers, but the wood store was closed (for “computer maintenance”) and so I couldn’t get the drawer bottoms. Instead, I got started on what I’m calling the “modules” that go around the perimeter of the base.
There are three different modules:
The fold-down player stations
The cupholders
The corners
The corners have no functionality, they’re just filling up space on the corner, but are weirdly enough probably the most complex to build. I wanted the corners to be visually very clean, so both the front face and top are going to mitered together:
But before I could get started on any of these I needed to pull down the top and front boards that I had originally resawed back at the beginning of the build. I sort of dreaded starting on these because it was going to be a lot of pieces to keep track of since I wanted to make sure the grain stayed continuous throughout the fronts and tops.
First I laid the boards out and figured out where to cut them into manageable chunks. I couldn’t cut the pieces for the corners and cupholders at this stage, or else they’d be too small to go through my jointer and planer. So I left them connected as one piece, 15” long, until everything was dimensioned to size:
I came up with a numbering scheme that I wrote onto the bottom of every board (FSR1: Front Short Right 1). Once they were dimensioned I could then cut the corner piece from the cupholder piece and lay them out:
Then I cut the 45° miter on the corners and after a couple of test cuts I found the exact angle to make two of them meet up at 90°:
Then I could see how everything would eventually be laid out on the table (the gaps are where the player stations would go):
Then I went through the same process for the tops. This time the 45° miter would be on the face of the board instead of the edge:
I got to dust off my rarely-used 45° miter sled:
And then finally I could lay out one of the corner blocks on the actual corner of the table:
All of the player station parts are stacked up neatly under the table until I’m read to start on those:
I hope I still remember how my numbering scheme goes by then! Next up I need to come up with a joinery system for these corner blocks. I’m currently thinking I’ll join the miters with biscuits (famously hard to glue up because they’re 50% endgrain which doesn’t glue very well) and pocketscrews (which will allow for the bit of wood movement that will happen throughout the year).
56 hours so far in building the table (doesn’t include time spent designing it).
Last night I glued up the miters for the corner modules. I used biscuits as improvised splines:
I put together a jig with some corner clamping blocks:
That’s the top miters, for the miters on the vertical sections I used the same biscuit spline method and some Woodpeckers Box Clamps:
Now I’m ready to assembly these corner modules, sand and finish. Then, I can start implementing my system for attaching the modules to the base!
As discussed in a previous post, connecting these modules (corner, cupholder, player station) to the base was going to be a challenge. Because wood moves throughout the year as humidity changes, you can’t just glue things together willy-nilly: if you join two pieces of wood together at a 90° angle, they’ll end up cracking at some point because the forces are opposing each other and something has to give.
As I was designing the table I came up with what I think is a pretty good system for attaching these modules, and even allows me to change them out in the future. My solution was to drill holes through the base and use threaded inserts in the modules:
These are M6 threads and accept M6-1.0 x 30mm flat head bolts. Now I can simply bolt the modules to the base!
The tricky part was going to be making sure that the holes line up between the base and the modules. To do that, I made a couple of jigs with drill bushings that make sure the bit stays at 90° to the surface I’m drilling. I drilled them both out on the drill press using a fence and stops to be sure I cut the holes in the same place on both jigs (each hole is 1 1/4” in from the ends):
On the modules, I used a 7/16” bit to start a hole which would let me counter-sink the threaded inserts. Then I went to the drill press and drilled a 11/32” hole centered on the first, which actually accepts the threaded insert:
The corner modules have 4 inserts total:
Then I used the sister jig to drill 1/4” holes in the base:
Four bolts and the corner module is connected! The bolts aren’t currently countersunk, but I’m debating whether or not I should…the edges of the bolts are chamfered so you wouldn’t bang your knee into it or anything, but it might look a little cleaner if you were to peek underneath.
The length of both sides of the table are multiples of 6” (84” x 54”) and each module is as well (corners and cupholders are 6” wide, the player station is 30”). As long as I stick to modules that are increments of 6” I can swap them in and out and the holes in the base will accept them! I’m already wondering about replacing one of the 2 cupholders on each short end of the table with a dice tower…
I’m thinking of increasing the holes in the base from 1/4” to 5/16”. This would give the bolts just a little bit of wiggle room in case a module ends up 1/32” over or undersized (not uncommon when working with wood!). I’ll pound out the bushing inserts in the jig, drill a bigger hole, and put in new inserts.
I put the first coat of finish on the corner blocks before assembly. This way if there’s any wood movement in the future, you won’t see any unfinished wood peeking out:
The main event for Saturday was starting on the cupholders:
The cupholder itself is a brass insert. I would have to cut a 90mm hole in a big block of 5” thick Sapele. More on that tomorrow. Today was about making the “box” that the cupholder would side in and out of. I had a little bit of spare wood from my previous part making, but not enough to build these boxes, so I pulled down a couple of boards that were on my wood rack. One was pretty warped, but I was able to cut it into 12” long sections, and the warp was minor enough per-board that I was able to get rid of it on the joiner after just a few passes. I also I had a board with some minor figure that I’ve been holding onto, but nothing too spectacular. It made a worthy sacrifice!
I used my drilling jig on the bottoms to get them ready to attach to the base:
The three sides created today, along with the top and front which were milled out when creating the corner boxes, I was able to dry fit the box and see it on the table:
Sunday will be all about getting the actual cupholder bodies done!
