custard
Established Member
Thanks for the previous comments and advice on edge planing the 88" long boards for an oak table top. The glue-up's now done and I'm pleased with the result, virtually invisible glue lines and the table top has no wind and is very flat, the merest sliver of light from under the straight edge, probably just a few tenths of a mill.
The next challenge is the breadboard ends. I'm going for a fairly orthodox construction, a full width through stub tenon (8mm x 8mm) and five mortice and tenons spread across the width of the table at each end. The only novelty is I'll use a Domino XL for the tenons, with 10mm x 80mm Dominos, the outside dominos being set on the "wide" setting to allow for expansion and contraction of the table top, giving 3mm of play on each side.
My only quandary is how best to make the stub mortice and tenon. As I said before I'm very familiar with the theory and with the practise on smaller pieces of furniture, but I'm not used to working on this scale, and because I'm on my own these are big bits of wood to be manhandling.
It seems to me I've four options for the stub tenons,
1. Cut the stub tenons with a hand held router, working from the top and bottom faces of the table top. The top face is dead flat, and the ends are dead square, so these two reference surfaces would be fine. The problem will be the underside of the table top, where some of the boards taper in thickness by up to 2mm at the ends. This creates "steps" which could jam the router, and the lack of a flat reference surface could throw a spanner in the works.
2. Cut the stub tenons with hand tools. If I use the Veritas Skew Rebate plane I'll have the same problem on the underneath of the table top as with the power router, namely the lack of a dead flat reference surface. Or I could use a Lie Nielsen Skew Block Plane, using the plane's fence the advantage would be that the primary reference surface is then the dead square ends of the table and I'd just work down to a gauged line. Time consuming, but at least it's not all going to go horribly wrong in the twinkling of an eye.
3. Stick the table top upside down on the sliding table (to take advantage of the dead flat top) and run it through the spindle moulder, set up with two tenoning cutters. The sliding table's plenty beefy enough for the task, but there's a lot of set up time, and it'd have to be right first time or the job could be ruined.
4. Again, stick the table top on the spindle moulder sliding table, but use a high speed (16,000 RPM) spindle with a router collet, so in effect use it like a giant router table. Doing it this way would require two passes on each end, and then there's the problem of the underside of the table top having a couple of tapered boards. It'd be less of a problem in that the reference surface in this case is the entire underside of the table top, which when resting on the sliding table would tend to average out, and I could creep up on the finished dimension. But I still couldn't be absolutely sure until I'd actually made a cut.
What would you do?
The next challenge is the breadboard ends. I'm going for a fairly orthodox construction, a full width through stub tenon (8mm x 8mm) and five mortice and tenons spread across the width of the table at each end. The only novelty is I'll use a Domino XL for the tenons, with 10mm x 80mm Dominos, the outside dominos being set on the "wide" setting to allow for expansion and contraction of the table top, giving 3mm of play on each side.
My only quandary is how best to make the stub mortice and tenon. As I said before I'm very familiar with the theory and with the practise on smaller pieces of furniture, but I'm not used to working on this scale, and because I'm on my own these are big bits of wood to be manhandling.
It seems to me I've four options for the stub tenons,
1. Cut the stub tenons with a hand held router, working from the top and bottom faces of the table top. The top face is dead flat, and the ends are dead square, so these two reference surfaces would be fine. The problem will be the underside of the table top, where some of the boards taper in thickness by up to 2mm at the ends. This creates "steps" which could jam the router, and the lack of a flat reference surface could throw a spanner in the works.
2. Cut the stub tenons with hand tools. If I use the Veritas Skew Rebate plane I'll have the same problem on the underneath of the table top as with the power router, namely the lack of a dead flat reference surface. Or I could use a Lie Nielsen Skew Block Plane, using the plane's fence the advantage would be that the primary reference surface is then the dead square ends of the table and I'd just work down to a gauged line. Time consuming, but at least it's not all going to go horribly wrong in the twinkling of an eye.
3. Stick the table top upside down on the sliding table (to take advantage of the dead flat top) and run it through the spindle moulder, set up with two tenoning cutters. The sliding table's plenty beefy enough for the task, but there's a lot of set up time, and it'd have to be right first time or the job could be ruined.
4. Again, stick the table top on the spindle moulder sliding table, but use a high speed (16,000 RPM) spindle with a router collet, so in effect use it like a giant router table. Doing it this way would require two passes on each end, and then there's the problem of the underside of the table top having a couple of tapered boards. It'd be less of a problem in that the reference surface in this case is the entire underside of the table top, which when resting on the sliding table would tend to average out, and I could creep up on the finished dimension. But I still couldn't be absolutely sure until I'd actually made a cut.
What would you do?
