Australian Wood Review - June 2018

96 Australian Wood Review

PROJECT

Sawing

Legs and rails were all sawn with a mitre saw. Before

cutting I marked each leg and rail carefully to retain the

position they will be when assembled. It is easy to mix

things up when sawing and find you have the legs upside

down, or worse still, find you have cut the wrong angles

and that parts need discarding.

Importantly, I looked at each piece before sawing so the

best grain pattern would be shown. In fact I ‘straightened’

the grain with some boards. The sawmiller can’t stop and

select each board he saws at the mill. Some boards will

come to you with the grain running pretty well parallel

with the sawn edges, while others will have grain running

at an angle along the board.

Often having the grain running parallel to the board looks

far superior in a finished piece. The width of the board will

dictate how much can be sawn away as waste to ‘straighten’

the board though – if you can’t straighten the grain then at

least you can improve it. Photo 1 shows what I mean.

The secrets

The front faces of the legs were bookmatched. I used a

wide board to saw the legs from so I could get the desired

bookmatch on the face that is rip sawn. If you use 50

x 50mm square stock for the legs you will get a more

random grain pattern on the leg faces.

Most people won’t ever notice this detail, but some

woodworkers will. The bookmatch makes the whole piece

appear more balanced. Viewing one of Geoff Hannah’s

masterpiece cabinets a while back I noted that he had

bookmatched pretty well everything on the cabinet.

Legs, doors, panels, stiles and even stone inlay were all

bookmatched. However only the front legs on this table

were bookmatched.

Another thing to note is that there is a top and bottom

to each board, meaning in relation to how the board was

milled from the tree. Japanese woodwork theory has it that

wood aligned with the growth of the tree will be less prone

to bending and twisting. A door stile with ‘the base of the

tree’ at the base will be more stable in use.

Now to be honest, I can’t tell by looking at it which way up

a board came from a tree, so my approximating method is

to hold a piece of wood lightly at each end and feel which

end is heavier. Heavy goes to the ground. So with each leg

I did this first.

Joinery

The joints for the legs to rails can now be made, here using

8 x 50mm long dominos (photo 2). If you don’t have a domino

power tool then dowels are an option, as is making a mortise

and tenon by hand. This is only a hall table so the stresses it

faces are minimal. Four 9.5mm dowels will be sufficient.

1. Sometimes you need to straighten the grain, as shown on this
   section of maple.


2. The rails were joined with dominos, but dowels can be used.


3. The front and rear rails were sawn at 5° and glued up with packers.


4. Components for the table frame prior to glue-up.


5. Side rails glued in.


6. Centre rail glued in, corner blocks glued and screwed in and
   mortises for buttons cut.

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