Monday, May 19, 2014

Never underestimate a determined woman in the woodshop!

Sometimes, it takes a village in order to make a piece of furniture. Case in point? One of my students decided to make a massive dining room table - it was the first large piece that she'd ever attempted - and gluing up the table top sections required some help. 



Luckily we have a lot of volunteers at the shop! Because our planer is only 24 inches wide (only!) - she had to glue the top up into several sections that could fit into the planer - and then do a final glue-up, joining the sections together.


 Using African Mahogany - which is dense and heavy, makes each one of these sections tough to handle. Of course, we're up to the challenge!



 The table legs were humongous 6x6 posts  - laminated separately, and then squared up on the jointer and planer. 


Good thing we have a lot of clamps!


And here's the final piece - with some iron banding added around the top edge, and around the legs. This table is massive, and weighs at least 500 pounds, probably more. It's amazing what some of the people are producing out of our humble shop! 


Congratulations to Donna; I hope her family enjoys this table for decades to come.