On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 12:24:24 -0400, loutent wrote:
:In article , Dan_Musicant : wrote: : :> I just completed a table for my home theater made from materials bought :> at Home Depot: :> :> Surfaces: 3/8 inch plywood :> Legs: 2x4, split with homemade rip-saw :> Side pieces: 3 x 3/8, split with homemade rip-saw :> :> Slapping it together was the toughest part. If I had it to do again I'd :> do one thing differently: I have two little blocks of wood fixed (two :> brads) to each leg just under each table surface. The function of those :> was just to hold the surfaces in place until it all got nailed together :> (there's no glue). That was fine. The thing I'd do differently is that :> I'd affix two similar pieces of wood on the underside of the top surface :> (not attached to the legs). Those would determine the position of the :> legs with regard to the top surface, and I'd nail the legs to those :> little blocks, first thing. That would have made everything line up :> perfectly. It came out OK, but not perfect. :> :> I sanded out all the pieces, finished them all with 1/2# cut orange :> shellac, and then wiped on/off boiled linseed oil. Put the pieces out in :> the sun for 3-4 days, and finished the legs and bottom two surfaces with :> 3# cut orange shellac (two coats), and rubbed out with 0000 steel wool, :> saturated with carnuba wax, and buffed. After it was all banged :> together, finished the top surface and the side pieces similarly. :> :> :> Photo: :>
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:> Dan : : :Hi Dan, : :Nice cobble job! Just goes to show what you can do with just :a little equipment and basic materials. : :Why didn't you use any glue? I don't think that I would :rely on just nails - especially for a TV stand. : :Nice finish too. : :Lou
Hi Lou,
Thanks. I'd made some tables around 25 years ago, that I sort of modeled this after, but those two tables were only 2 deckers. A third deck makes it quite a bit tougher to assemble them, but I only realized this when I was done assembling! The original tables (I still use them) were glued. I assembled them unfinished. This table, I decided, I was going to shellac and I didn't want to tackle a shellac job with a finished piece such as this - too tricky. So, I decided to do most of the finishing on the pieces, assemble, and then do the last finishing work on the assembled table. I didn't figure that I could glue up shellaced pine, is the reason I decided to forgo the glue. I put so many brads in it, I don't think strength and stability will be an issue. I'm not going to put a TV on it, anyway. It's all going to be light stuff: turntable on the top, a VCR or two and a double cassette deck on lower levels, some more stuff, but nothing heavy. Yeah, you could kick it to pieces in a minute, but I don't think it's going to get that kind of treatment.
The tools I used, aside from basic hand tools are:
Circle saw - to cut the plywood Rip saw - to cut the legs from 2 x 4 Rip saw - to slice the strips for the sides Jig saw and dremel - to trim off a bit from the 2nd level that was too long when I discovered that things weren't truly square due to the problem I mentioned in the original post.
There's one other thing I should have mentioned: It would have been way, way easier to assemble this piece if I'd had some big clamps. Too bad I didn't pick up some 24" and 36" clamps at Harbor Freight when I dropped in there a few weeks ago! I meant to, not because I envisioned needing them in the near future, but because I figured the day would probably come when I would need them. I often buy tools and things on that basis and 95% of the time (at least) it turns out I'm right. Next time I'm there, I will hopefully buy them.
Dan