Garden Table Build Process
Return to main project pagePage 25 of 34
Posted 26th May 2025
Well, I was hoping for more of a response to all my questions / requests for help than I got, but I guess I'll just have to carry on and hope for the best. This morning I carried on planing the angles onto the various planks until they were all the same width and at what appeared to be the correct angle as far as the sliding bevel showed:
I arranged all of them on the bench with the grain direction pointing the same way (just because it seemed like a good idea) and with what seemed to be the best pattern match from one plank to the next. I then labelled them A-H:
As a trial, I added some masking tape and pulled them round into an octagon:
This shows what they look like from one end:
There are some small gaps, suggesting the angles weren't all absolutely perfect, but it should be fairly easy to sort out: I think I can pick any plank and plane it (with the #7 over to one side or the other as appropriate) and it'll close up the gap. The result won't be a perfect octagon (as I'll potentially be planing one plank more than the others), but the effect should be small enough not to be noticeable.
If you look at the size of it versus the rule, you might notice it's a bit bigger than I said in yesterday's post (where I said it would make a 115 mm diameter cylinder with a 55 mm hole through the middle). That was just a stupid mistake as I'd loaded the polygon calculator but left it on the default of a hexagon rather than changing it to an octagon. With the calculator set-up properly, it shows the outer octagon to be 162 mm and hence the inner one 102 mm across-flats, which matches the actual size of the column.
To try to help make the decision on octagonal vs cylindrical column, I thought I'd do the model properly for each:
Before making that decision, the next job is to tweak the angles slightly to minimise gaps in the joints, trim the planks to length and then try to make the decision on whether to try to add splines of some sort. Adding splines will be far from easy, so I'll only do it if I (or someone else) can convince myself that it's necessary.
Page 25 of 34
This website is free and ad-free, but costs me money to run. If you'd like to support this site, please consider making a small donation or sending me a message to let me know what you liked or found useful.