Dining Set Tutorial #7 - Cherry and Walnut Dining Table

Now for the table. Building this baby felt like a cakewalk after the hours involved in those chairs. Back in the day when I was milling up the 8/4 walnut for the chair legs, I set aside and laminated pieces for the Table legs. You can see the pattern in the middle. Each triple-laminated blank rendered two legs without waste.

Dining Set Tutorial #6: Captains Chairs

This is where we get to the custom furniture part. My clients (aunt and uncle) were split on the chair back design.  My uncle enjoys lower back support, as do I.  My aunt, not as much.  The compromise was to make two captains chairs with a different back.  This added several hours to the build, but also gave me the opportunity to push my skills and creativity. 

I should note, this is some of the most technical handwork I've pulled off to date, so I'll attempt to explain as best I can. I know, pictures do most the talking. If your not adept with joinery terms, you may need to google a few terms. 

Anyway, notice the captains chair below is glued up without the back slats. Well, in order to give some lower back support, the back slats are going to go all the way to the seat. So, I can insert the custom backslats later when I install the seat. 

Dining Set Tutorial #5 Sculpted Seats

Down to bidness. Here's the steps I used for the sculpted seats.

Using the chair as a pattern:

Dining Set Tutorial #4 Glue Up and Lower Stretchers

Lots of action in this blog. If you've been reading, you know I'm a better woodworker than I am a writer. Hopefully the pictures help. Ha!

Glue Up:

New town, new house, new shop. I've got the the chair parts laid out on my bench just as I left off this past summer. 

Reclaimed Dining Table with Dovetailed Breadboards, Part Two

Part two starts with the base. You can see I half-lapped some massive timbers in an "X". I marked the large dado, cut the kerf on the tablesaw, and cut the waste out on the bandsaw. Little tip: cut the dado slightly undersized, then make tiny passes with the jointer (or hand plane) on the side of the leg until you have a perfect fit.

Reclaimed Dining Table with Dovetailed Breadboards Part One

Yikes! It's been a couple months since I've posted a darn thing. This summer I accepted a new job in management with the railroad, which involved relocating to a different part of Iowa. So, new job, new house, new shop... it's almost set up and ready to roll. In other words, I've been a little busy.

That said, I want to jump back and blog a cool project that I collaborated on with one of my best buds back in Council Bluffs. He's a painter who specializes in faux finishes and the like. One day he got a hold of some nice reclaimed barn wood and we started kicking around ideas for a dining table.

Over a couple of Newcastle Ales we narrowed down dimensions for the table. We also goofed around on the interwebz a bit looking for ideas. Per my usual, we stole various design aspects/ideas and came up with something we liked. With this particular lumber, I had the challenge of making odd-shaped, not-so-uniform boards and timbers and working them into the design and joinery. It all worked out pretty well......and here's how I did it.

Dining Set Tutorial #3 Front Legs and Curved Back Rails

Front Legs

Finally, an easy chair part to make. The front legs are 1-5/8"x 1 -5/8' x 16"long. It's pretty easy to mill some 8/4 stock down to 1 -5/8" and rip them on the tablesaw. Ideally you'd use riftsawn stock (diagonal end grain) so that the grain looks similar on all four sides, like this: