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It's in it's final spot…finally.

Kevin helped with the carrying, the top itself was a brute,  We got it about 20 feet from the truck and enlisted two more men when we needed to drop it in place.

The base went together smoothly.  I had fitted the two boards for the seating in the workshop and they went on easily.  The top I never dry fitted it but only eyeballed it and had determined that it would go come the time we dropped it over the tenons.

And drop it did…with a little friendly persuasion.

Pounded in the wedges in the tenons to force them outward and we're calling this one done.  Later on in the summer, I'll come back and put on some more finish after the sun does it thing and even out the tones.

Jeff, the head guy at the winery had come out to take a look at the table.  They were pretty much in the dark about what I was going to bring to them.  I had shown some sketches I had done earlier but those sketches I had drawn before I actually had the wood in the workshop.  Once the wood was in the shop I changed the direction of the design.  Before steel held the table together, now…traditonal joints held it together. 

Jeff left, a few minutes later he came back with a case of wine on his shoulder for me to take home.  Gotta love the wine industry.

A half hour later, Cindy, a VP of sales and marketing, shows up with a six of beer.  Again gotta love that.

One Final Step before delivery

Music is playing, right now it's some Southern spirituals a friend, CLo, gave me. Maybe up next will be Tupac…edit..turned out I put on some MadLib.

Rip sawing the kerfs in the tenons to accept the wedges when the assembly is done on site.  Very meditative.

Top together

Ed, the picture framer has his shop near me.  Ed is no ordinary picture framer but deals only with the finest of modern art and only with the richest of the richest clients.   On any given day he'll have millions of dollars of art in his uber fortified and alarmed shop.

He knows miters like no one else so when he vehemently advised me against using them on the top of an outdoor table I heeded his advice.

The boards are cupped like crazy and it would have been a herculean task getting them to fit right anyway so I ended up running them like you see here.  They are reinforced from below.  The mortices are cut and just starting to rough sand.  I'm going to leave the surface as it comes off the coarser grit of the belt sander.

Oh, and to those that have questioned me, I don't teach and I'm not taking interns in either wood or photography.  But thanks for asking.

And the Three shall become One.

Like Ed says, "It's architectural."  And that it is.  Big, burly, all angles…where you want to be under during the big earthquake.  It's going to be bombproof.

Fourteen more mortises to be cut, some large miter joints and four 40" sliding dovetails to go.  I'm hoping Ed talks me out of the miters.

Stretcher to Leg Assembly

To attach the stretcher to leg I used a through wedged mortise and tenon.  The tenons were approx 2X 4" long and I hammered and glued in a couple 5/16-3/8" wide wedges per joint.

In a bout of mild insanity I decided I should stand up the assembly for the wedges to be driven home.  First photo is the assembly in the leg vise.

Fitting the stretchers

I guess these are bird's mouth joints.  Double bird's mouth joints.  Strangely enough, or it is to me, these 3x8's are really out of square.  I'm shying away from squaring them up for they have a lot of grit, tiny rocks, staples and nails in them.  I check them over and scrape with a cabinet scraper but I still don't want to run them through the jointer.
So the joinery takes some final fiddling with to get things matching up.

Pegs

I don't trust the glue so adding redundancy to everything.  Pounding in pegs where I can.

Reclaimed Wood Table supermini update #2

The photography jobs have gotten in the way of working on this full time.
These cross members are for the most part done.  Up next will be the stretchers and braces.
Planning on those to be the last remaining 3"X8"s and joining with old post and beam barn joints.