Garden Table Build Process
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Posted 5th May 2025
After a short digression to upgrade our cat flap from one that needs a magnet on a collar to one that reads the microchip in the neck (as a result of another cat in the neighbourhood presumably also having a magnetic collar and hence getting into our house), I started the afternoon by marking out all the pockets with a knife:
I then used the same marking gauge as before (on the same setting) to mark the depth of the pockets, marking from the face side:
I then knifed down the sides of the pockets for good measure.
Cutting out the pockets was similar to preparing dovetails in drawer fronts: I started by sawing to the line with the Dozuki:
For sawing, I had the table clamped to the bench like this:
That didn't make for the most ergonomic sawing position: I had my arm going down through one opening in the table so it could grip the saw from underneath the table as the saw protruded through the other opening:
Nevertheless, it was quite easy to see what I was doing while I sawed, so it didn't take long. The remains then got chopped out:
Finishing to depth was done with a router plane on some of them and just with the chisel on others. Part of the reason was that I hadn't bothered to tap out the central location 3D-printed thing and it would have got in the way of the router plane, but part of it was also that I thought the chisel practice would do me good. The first one chopped out...
... and the slat fitted:
After doing the first one, I sawed and chopped all the others in one go before fitting them all. I took a photo of them all tapped (but not glued) home but it came out so blurry you couldn't see anything. I'll take another one later. In the meantime, this is the top side of the table:
All was looking good to me, so I tapped it back apart, slathered on some glue and then tapped it back together. It holds together pretty well on its own, but I figured clamps couldn't hurt:
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