Let's see where did I leave off? Oh yeah I had all the wood milled and ready for joinery. I started by adding the Cherry edging to the double layer plywood, I glued it on and used small nails to hold it while the glue dries and for good measure a little blue tape never hurt.
After the glue dried I cleaned up all the edges making sure everything was flush and sanded it and I applied a coat of Poly because I wanted something that was easy to clean and durable.
Next I moved onto cutting all the joinery... The whole stand is built using Mortise and Tenon joinery and whenever possible I like to make all the tenons the same size or at least a size that means I don't have to change the table saw setup. Now here is a picture that shows that most of the tenons had the same size except the small ones.
This was an easy setup I set the table saw blade 1" from the fence and to cut 1" high and went to town on all the pieces, the small ones I did last and all I had to do was lower the blade to cut 1/2" high.
Then came the hard part....chopping out the mortises, this is where I'm glad I was using a soft wood like pine. I took my chisels marked out where I need to cut mortises and starting chopping...It actually didn't take too long. The top of the legs got a mortise that reveals the top and the middle of the legs just get a standard mortise.
Once all the chopping was done I decided I didn't want to sand everything so I used a hand plane and Its amazing how smooth you can get wood with hand planes... smoother than sanding in some cases. Check out the first picture... It shows the rough board and the second picture shows how smooth it gets after planning.
After planning all the boards smooth I built the side assemblies of the legs first. Once I had the mortises cut it was just a matter of putting glue in them and putting the pieces together, using some clamps and waiting for them to dry.
Once the side assemblies where dry it was time to add the long stretchers. Now I don't have clamps long enough for the span but I have a couple of band clamps and those did the trick. Once everything was glued up I put the top on with screws from the bottom up.
Notice the milky white look of the table top? Well I still don't know what the hell happened, maybe the Poly I used was old or something but since its just a shop stand I'm not gonna worry about it... but you better believe I threw that can of finish in the trash....
I put the lathe on top and its perfect height, stable and working great.
Next I will be building the drawer cabinet that will fit below the table top and have 3 drawers I think.
Stay tuned....
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