Three's Company

[srt]

I'm relatively new to woodworking and i have been following quite a few WIPs in the project threads and had learnt that with a solid top table that it was never screwed down or secured with glue and biscuits as movement would split the table top,but todat as i read the Woodworker magazine the nest of tables were all screwed down is their a reason for this? :?

 

[Steve Maskery]

A nest of tables has very small tops, so any movement will be small. If the screws are through oversized holes, there will be enough play to accommodate this small amount.
S

 

[Hudson Carpentry]

You don't glue the top down no but you do screw the top. What happens if you knock it or one kid falls into one side knocking the top onto another kid the other side.

There are many ways to fix a top to a table or the alike. One method is to "e-long-gate" (sorry don't know how to spell it) the holes so the screws can move with the wood movement. Another way is to cut slots (housing or dado depending where your from) into the apron and make some L shaped brackets that will slide in these slots, you screw these brackets to the top and the top can't move off the base as its stuck in these slots..

 

[srt]

Hi Steve i take your point regarding screws,the most common method i have seen are buttons

 

[Steve Maskery]

Buttons are the way I would choose normally, but they are not so suitable for nests, as they tend to interfere with the nesting.
S

 

[Sgian Dubh]

A nest of tables has very small tops, so any movement will be small. If the screws are through oversized holes, there will be enough play to accommodate this small amount. S

Steve, the method you describe is properly known as pocket screwing the top in place.

For srt's benefit, traditionally a shallow trench is excavated with a gouge at a shallow acute angle on the inside face of the rail. The deep end of the trench usually ends about 1" down from the top edge of the rail and a clearance hole is bored up to the rail top from the blank end of the gouged out trench. Lastly a screw with a shank about 1 mm less than the diameter of the hole is inserted and fixed to the underside of the table top in a pilot hole -- the sloppiness is to allow for a bit of expansion and contraction in the table top.

Contemporarily, you see a similar joinery system using Kreg type pocket screwing jigs, although in this instance the holes bored are tight on the screw shank diameter with the intention of reducing movement to a minimum to form a solid joint. Slainte.

 

[Doug B]

The tops are fixed with pocket screws & the write up does state that the screws should be positioned centrally in their slots to allow the top to move.

 

[Benchwayze]

When I first started making rubbed joints in table tops, occasionally my early ones did open up along a joint. The mishaps were down to poorly executed joints, because I always used buttons to fix the tops. Biscuits could cause splitting, but it depends on how tightly they grip the timber. There were no biscuits freely available in the 1960s though, so if I wanted to align boards I used dowels; but I didn't glue the dowels into the edges. Glue was applied just along the joint. Some glue probably got onto the dowels, but they were there simply to align the boards.

With plywood or other man-made tops, pocket holes are quite satisfactory. My old Dad made our kitchen table, and he used the pocket hole method to fix the top. Although in the 1940s there was no DIY jig to do the job. So there really ain't nothing new under the Sun! 8)

(I know about the pocket holes because that old table was one of my favourite toys. Turned upside down it became whatever vessel or vehicle my imagination could dream up!) Happy Days!

 

[hunggaur]

i have used screws in e-long-gated holes but i have also routered a slot all the way round the inside of the work piece and then used clip blocks theses can slide up and down the groove and allow for expansion and contraction