Garden Table Build Process
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Posted 6th July 2024
I haven't had much time in the workshop lately as a result of my other half's car accident, so my three parallel projects have all ground to a halt. However, things are getting a bit easier as she gradually heals and I think it would do me a lot of good to have a bit of workshop time, so I've decided it's time to resurrect the garden table project.
The table top design hasn't changed much over the past couple of months, but it has had a couple of tweaks. This is what the latest CAD model looks like:
It's still the same size (900 mm across flats, 975 mm across corners). The main changes are:
- The top has got thicker (currently modelled as 30 mm thick)
- The gaps between the slats have got a bit bigger (about 8 mm gap between 65 mm wide slats)
- I've added splines on the edge mitres (currently two of them, although I might just do one when it comes to it).
My current thoughts for joinery are to use mortice & tenon joints for the ends of the central cross-bar. For the slats, I'm torn between doing the same (mortices and tenons) or doing something like a half-lap joint (possibly a blind half-lap dovetail). I'm currently leaning towards the latter as it offers the big advantage of allowing me to fit the slats after gluing the rest of the assembly together.
Although there's still plenty of scope for changing the design, at some point I'm just going to have to bite the proverbial bullet and start preparing some wood. To that end, I pulled my stock of sweet chestnut out of the rack and laid it out on the garage floor to measure it all:
The left-hand four planks are all about 36 mm thick (rough sawn); the right-hand one is about 47 mm thick (again rough sawn). I'm hoping I can turn the 36 mm thick planks into 30 mm planed pieces, which I'll then use for the table top and, if any is left, for rails/stretchers (for a base that I've yet to design, but is likely to be cross-shaped). The thicker plank (currently 47 mm thick) I'm hoping to use for the legs, but I'm not sure whether it's thick enough. I'd guess it would end up as 40 mm square legs once it's planed and chopped up. Any thoughts on whether that's enough for a 750 mm long leg on a table of this size?
The 47 mm thick piece is 2.6 metres long and varies in width from about 160 mm to 220 mm along the length. That should be plenty to produce the legs (if 40 mm is thick enough) as I'll be able to get multiple legs out of the width of the plank I think.
The others vary in length: two are about 1.9 metres long and two about 2.9 metres long. That looked to me to be an awful lot of wood, but it's surprising how much you need when you start adding up all the pieces that make up the top. If I cautiously assume that I can get two pieces out of each width (in practice I'll be able to get three from some bits: the planks vary in width from 220 mm up to 300 mm and the table top pieces are either 65 mm wide or 80 mm wide), then there is enough wood there for the top with about 600 mm spare: much less than I expected when I looked at the pile on the floor.
Of course in practice it'll be better than that as there will be lots of areas where I can get three pieces out across the width and there's also quite a lot of excess in the 47 mm thick piece. Either way, I've got a lot of planing to do in the near future!
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