This is my first commission piece!
A client came to me with some poplar and oak reclaimed from his great grandparents farm and asked me to build a 4' x 10' table. The poplar was 15" to 16" wide, so I ripped the best three down to 15" so they would fit through the planer. Once I got them flat, I match jointed the edges and glued them up using dominos for alignment. I then created a tenon the entire width of the end grain by routing a groove at the depth of the tenon and then cleaning out the waste with a chisel and a router plane. I routed the mortise on each end cap on the router table. I cut slots in the tenon and drilled matching 1/2" holes in the end caps for dowels. I tapped the dowels in and applied a little glue for the final taps so that the dowels are only glued to the end caps and not the tenon. This should allow for seasonal wood movement. I did glue about 3 - 4" of the middle of the tenon to the end cap mortise in the center. Using the dominos for alignment made it much easier to flatten the top. Though, I did feel a little precarious on top of the table with the hand plane.
The client wanted to keep the distressed look and saw marks on the oak for the base. The challenge with this was not having square wood to work with. I created a jig for routing the mortises in the legs and hand cut the tenons on the apron. The mortises for the through wedges were drilled mostly on the drill press and cleaned out with a chisel. I also had a limited amount of oak, so I had to use boards that were bowed and twisted. The two cross pieces in the center were very twisted. I cut the mortise on one apron, both tenons, then marked the mortise on the twisted end. I set the mortise a bit high so I could come back later with a hand plane to level off the top. I used a router to cut slots in the apron and made about 16 blocks to fit in the slots and secure the top to the base.
The top was finished with 7 coats (each side) of Ephifanes gloss varnish. The first few coats were thinned with 50% mineral spirits and final coats were thinned with 25% mineral spirits. I sanded with 320 between the first few coats and 400 between the final coats with my Festool 150/3 (love that sander). The final sanding for the show surface was 400, 800, 1000, 1200 with the 150/3, and a final polish with 5000 grit polishing compound using a very fine sponge and a Festool Rotex 150.
Here are some pics of the build.
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