The "Modules"

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:

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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:

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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°:

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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:

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I got to dust off my rarely-used 45° miter sled:

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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).

Progress Total

56 hours so far in building the table (doesn’t include time spent designing it).