I began building the top from 2x8 Southern Yellow Pine I had picked up from the local big box lumber store.   It was one of the types of wood Chris Schwarz recommended for bench building.   Luckily, it’s relatively cheap here in central Ohio.   An 8 foot board was about $7.00.   I certainly could have spend a lot more on Maple or some other hardwood, but I tried to keep the advice from my friend in mind that I might be building a new table in a few short years after I use it for awhile.   No sense in spending a large amount of money on my first shot at this.

I did notice something about the larger home improvement stores around here.  When I asked about Southern Yellow Pine, the store clerks weren’t sure what I was talking about.  Eventually, after walking down a couple isles, I remembered that it’s used for floor joists a lot.  So when I “re-phrased” my question, it was much easier to locate.  After picking through most of the pile to get past the warped, cracked, split, and generally bad boards, I managed to select enough decent pieces to take home.  Since it’s a dimensional lumber used for framing floors it has the typical rounded edges, so an obvious step was to rip the boards down in order to get a nice crisp edge.

I’m nowhere near competent enough with a hand saw for long rips, and using a circular saw meant clamping guides over and over again which would eat up a lot of time and effort. So I opted to use my small table saw.  Because it’s only a small 10 inch portable bench top table saw, I also decided I needed to get the pieces as close to their intended length as possible first for safety’s sake, before trying to feed them through and trim off the edges.

So using my circular saw, I cut the boards for the top down to 6 feet in length, and while I was at it, I cut down the legs and stretcher parts to their respective lengths. I left nearly an inch extra for the boards that will made up the top, so I’d be able to square up the length with my circular saw after gluing up all the boards.  My reasoning was, if my glue ups were sloppy or if the top got out of square, then I’d have the ability to trim a half an inch at least from either side without losing my 6’ in length.

My other reason for using 2x8’s I was able to make the top 3 ½ inches thick. I figured if I nicked off about a quarter inch on either side, to take off the rounded edges and then used the freshly cut side against the table saw fence set at 3 ½ inches, I’d come out with a slight amount of waste, but not a lot.  That seemed to work out well.

Even though they were cut to length, the stretchers and boards for the top presented a challenge for that small of a table saw.  I had to use various tables and rollers to get a proper infeed and outfeed area so feeding those boards through didn’t cause me serious injury.  Not only did I have this to deal with, I also had to deal with less than perfect lumber.  Anyone using a table saw to cut a board that’s slightly warped knows binding or twisting can be a serious issue.  Kickback is something I’ve experienced and I don’t care to experience it again.

Laminating the Boards Together

I didn’t get a picture of the laminating process, which basically was gluing two boards together, clamping them overnight, gluing two more boards together with the first two, clamping them overnight, and so on, adding two boards at a time until I ended up with the 24 inches I needed for the width.  And yes, I ended up buying a number of clamps.  I have two 48 inch bar clamps (Jorgensen's) which are reasonably priced around here, and six 3/4 inch pipe clamps (Pittsburg Steel).  The pipe clamp hardware was cheap.  I purchased it separately at a local discount outlet, and then bought 3/4 inch threaded pipe from the local home improvement center.  I ended up buying 60 inch pipes.  I figured if I needed a clamp to hold together something 48 inches wide, I wouldn’t have to make another trip to the store.

I did notice something about these pipe clamps.  They don’t have very wide clamping faces.  They’re only a little over half of the 3 ½ inches that the boards I’m gluing up were.  Once I put down the pipe clamps on the folding table, laid the boards on top of the pipes to glue them up and tightened the clamps, I realized the top edge of my boards weren’t very tight.  Most of the pressure was on the middle and lower portion of the boards.  Thankfully I had the two bar clamps.  Using those across the top, I managed to get enough pressure to squeeze the top edge tight.  So if you’re thinking of using pipe clamps, either get some with wider clamping faces or invest in four or more 48 inch bar clamps.  The wider faced cabinet style clamps would probably be best for this, but those are more expensive and I’m on a budget, so I made do with what I could afford.

Incidentally, I used an entire 16 oz. bottle of Titebond 3 on this step and for gluing up the legs. I probably could’ve used more.  I started out putting a zig-zag pattern on the faces to be glued up.  What I should’ve done was put a nice thin layer on one side using a foam brush.  This method seems to help in getting a nice even fit between the two surfaces without a lot of leftover glue leaking out.  The zig-zag pattern I used at first left me with a couple of boards that didn’t remain tight after a few days.  Luckily, they were on the outsides, and I simply used a hand chisel and a mallet down the length to carefully wedge between them until they came apart.  Luckily, there was no splitting or cracking.  After cleaning off the old dried on glue, I reapplied fresh glue using a foam brush and an even coat, re-clamped the assembly and that seems to be holding up better.

Gluing and clamping a large number of long pieces together to form the top, according to what I read, can end up leaving the finished product less than square, due to the clamping pressure required.  I don’t have a power planer or a belt sander, so my only recourse will be to cut the ends smooth, and then use a hand plane on the faces of the long side to “square” things up.  If the faces are really bad, I suppose I could clamp down a straight edge and use my circular saw to even it out.  Hopefully, I won’t have to do that.  I’ll be able to gauge that task more accurately once I get the top onto the assembled legs.

Smoothing Practice

I have to admit something.  I’ve never in my life used a hand plane before, other than to smooth out an ill-fitting gate assembly for our privacy fence.  I never even knew a “new” plane wasn’t even properly sharpened out of the box!  At least one in the price range I could afford.  When I started this project, I realized I’d have to use a hand plane on the bench top.  My first lesson was, that the inexpensive smoothing plane I bought a few years back was probably not going to be as useful as I thought.  It certainly didn’t have a decent edge.  After learning how to sharpen using sandpaper (the “Scary Sharp” method), I practiced on every scrap board I had.  No matter what I tried I never got decent results.  Ok, so maybe my sharpening skills need work, I can understand that, but I had a feeling my tool itself was not as good as I had hoped.

After reading a lot about hand planes, and asking more questions from knowledgeable people, I was able to pinpoint part of the problem.  The plane I was using was more suited to “smoothing” than “jointing”.  Jointing was what I needed to do to that top.  Smoothing would come later after the top was decently prepared.

Fortunately, there was a flea market of sorts nearby and I was able to procure a Stanley No. 6 Jointer Plane.  It was a fairly nice specimen, pretty well cleaned up and decently sharp.  After trying it out on some scrap, I went ahead and gave it the “scary-sharp” treatment, which it did need, and decided to try it out on my top.  I turned the top over and decided to practice on the bottom first, just in case.  After about a half hour, I had almost half of the job finished and I was getting nice thin wood shavings.  I was quite pleased that my efforts at learning to hand plane were paying off quite nicely.  I couldn’t believe the difference a good tool can make.  The No. 6 was working so much better than my cheap “new” plane.

With the bottom of the top smoothed out, I decided I would wait until the top was mounted on the legs before smoothing out the actual work surface side.   Of the articles I’ve read, this seems to be the preferred method of finishing the top off before drilling the dog holes and mounting the clamp assemblies.

With the top looking decent, we’re on to the next installment, where I’ll get into the parts for the base.