[Woodworkers] A table, make that BIG TABLE

[Dave Heitstuman]

I'm pretty sure I have shared at least one of the previous table builds but if not here goes the latest build.  First a bit of a preface.  My neighbors son is a machinist/mill wright by trade.  He is also pretty knowledgeable on construction, a freaking awesome metal worker, and taking the words of Michael Keaton's character in the Movie Night Shift, "I'm an idea man".  Josh is an idea man, he has vision and he can turn his vision into cool stuff.  His idea's meld old or used wood with metal.  When he came to me about 8 years ago for help he told me, I know metal I don't know wood.  So I have become the facilitator of the wood portion of his projects.  There has been some random stuff over the years along with 3 tables, this will be table number 4 and is by far the biggest one.  All of them have been with steel I beams for legs and arched metal pieces tieing the legs together.  The legs have fake rivets to give it an old look.  The tops were made from old timbers, reclaimed timbers, and the last one from an oak crate that held a several hundred horse power motor.
This one is being built from red fir timbers that came out of an old grain elevator from a small farming town south of Spokane.  They were resawn to roughly 3" thick, 9" wide and 10 feet long.  Josh prefers a bit of a rough look so not much planning or smoothing is done.  If we to have to plane them to get to a more universal thickness it is all taken off the bottom.  This table is to be a farm table, with the only metal being the 2 legs and his signature metal band that goes around the table.  The crazy part was creating the beam that ties the legs together.  The finished size is 6 x 6 x I think 9 feet long.  To get the arch we drew the arc on it, got his dad over to help and cut it with the bandsaw.  At first I was a bit skeptical about even doing it, and then once we started could we hold the line?  In the end it came out OK.  As you can see in the attached pictures it takes up a bit of shop space.  We will have to move the assembly table before we can continue on, the only issue with that is it pretty much shuts me down from doing anything else until we finish the table.
The pictures are the beam, 2 views of 3D printed scale models of the table and the 5 table planks glued together.  The next step is to cut the ends off and then attach the bread board ends.  The finished table will be roughly 4' x 12' x 3" thick.........

2Dave


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