Build a Side Table

Here's a nice little table project you can easily bang out in a weekend or even less than a weekend. Pretty simple stuff. Leg and rail assembly, solid wood shelf, solid wood top. One of the cheats I use when I'm designing stuff like this whenever I can is the golden rectangle, a ratio of 1.6 to one. The top of this table is 1.6 longer than it is wide. It's a great thing to keep in mind when you're designing. Next, let us start machining some wood. After it's machined, we'll get after the joinery, and start puttin' a table together so you can see how it goes. It's always best to start your projects by creating one good edge on each of your project pieces. Easiest way to do this as at a joiner, which will make that edge smooth, straight, and square. So get started by runnin' one edge of each piece over your joiner. On the parts that you'll be usin' to glue up to make the top and the shelf, do one edge, and then put those edges up against each other and make sure that they close. Make sure that they meet nicely. If not, just do another pass. After you have one good edge on each piece, head for your table saw and rip the parts to size. It's actually size plus a little bit. We wanna leave room here so that we can go back to the jointer and clean off the saw marks that we're creating in this step. So rip your parts about a 16th of an inch oversize. Next step, we'll head back to the joiner. And that is the easiest way to take those saw marks off. Narrow pieces like this, great idea to use a push pad and a push stick to get the parts propelled through the joiner. Now, at the same time here, you should be preppin' your leg pieces. And you can either simply rip those out of thicker stock or glue 3/4-inch stock together to make up the inch and a 1/2 legs, but get those legs prepped at the same time as we're doin' all these other parts. When the parts have been ripped, and jointed, and are cleaned up in those directions, now we need to clean them up in the other direction, which means squaring one end, doin' that at the miter saw. Once you've got one end cut square, you wanna make sure all the rails come out to the same length, the two short, the four shorts and the four longs, best way to do that is with a stop block. Put that squared end against the block, cut 'em to final length. We're gonna take advantage of pocket-hole joinery to bring this project together. That's gonna hold the rails to the legs. And it's also gonna be the way that we glue up the top and the shelf. Let's talk about the top and the shelf for a second. What I've got here, this is my top. I've got a face mark on here that shows me how these two pieces go together. Now, remember I mentioned earlier, double-check your jointer work and make sure that this joint closes. If it closes well with hand pressure, when we put glue and we drive screws in there, it's gonna be really, really great. The other thing I did on the backs is I marked out what will be the overall length of the leg and rail assembly when we're done. The reason for that is when we come in with the pocket-hole jig and start punching the pocket-holes, I wanna make sure I'm starting a couple inches in from there. It's not a hard and fast number. This is just insurance to make sure I don't end up with a pocket-hole right out there on the end of either of these parts. Now, pocket-hole part of this is easy. It's good to have a vice. And then set up your jig so that there's the line. We're gonna come in a couple inches from it. Clamp. And with our two mating pieces, you only need to do this to one of 'em. In other words, one piece of the top, one piece of the shelf. Now, I can see my other line down there, and I'm eyeballin' the approximate center. This isn't rocket science. You don't have to go nuts laying out this location. I'm gonna do these last two. Then I'm gonna do the exact same thing to my other piece. That's for the shelf. Once we have that ready, then we can assemble these babies. All set with pocket-holes for our edge-to-edge glue up. Here's what this wants to be when it grows up. We're gonna put them together like that. And those screws are gonna be our clamps, works out really, really well. Wax paper underneath so I don't glue this to my bench. Now, what you do need are clamps to do this. And that's just gonna help keep everything level while we do this. In order of operations, I'm intentionally doin' this and the top first because in the time it takes us to work with the rails and the legs, these will be dry, and we'll be able to come back and start workin' with 'em. Once that glue is dry, a little bit of sanding as needed, to do any leveling you have to do on that seam. But that's what we're after. A nice panel glue up like that. I need to do the same thing to my other parts. Very cool, now let's do some joinery on those rails. Our joinery is gonna be pocket-holes throughout. We're gonna do two on each end of each rail. Before you drill pocket-holes, it's always a good idea to mark the faces that the pocket-holes will go in. Helps prevent mental errors later of flippin' parts around and drillin' holes in the wrong faces. Now, to get to this setting, we're gonna take the jig we've got and break that down so that we have narrowness. And that's a way better setup for the width of these rails. Rail in a vice. Jig on the rail. And all I'm doin' with that jig looking down at it, is I'm just eyeballing it for center. Doesn't have to be perfect. Your eyes will give you what you need there. Rotate, don't flip. Ask me how I know. And then it's a bunch of rinse and repeat. We're gonna do this same operation to each end of every rail. That's it, that takes care of all our joinery. Now, what we're gonna do next is take advantage of that pocket-hole jig and make an accommodation for the fact that the top and the shelf are solid wood and they're gonna wanna expand and contract. We need to let them do that. Next thing we wanna do is make an accommodation for the expansion and contraction of the top and the shelf. So we can't just drill a pocket-hole 'cause that'll lock that solid wood, those solid wood components in place against the rails, they might crack. We wanna let 'em wiggle a little bit. So we're gonna do a series of pocket-holes. This works out really well. First thing, you need to increase the depth of drill on your drill bit by a little bit. You gotta reset this so that when we punch these holes, the tip of the bit is actually gonna exit the edge of our material, so increase that depth. Now, on my material, I marked 2 1/4 down from the end on every one of my rails on what will be the top edge. Then I need another mark. I'm gonna do this with bar stock. With the bar stock right on that pencil line, 3/8 bar stock, I'm gonna strike a line. So there's a 3/8 gap between those two, 3/16 bar stock, strike a line. So 2 1/4 plus 3/16, plus 3/8, here's how we use this. Put the jig on the top line. Drill one hole usin' the top guide. Now go to the bottom line, the 3/8 line. Drill one. Same guide, use the same guide. And then come back up, and punch out the center. Same guide. Doin' it in that sequence, I have found gives us better results. Generally it works better when you're clearin' out wood if you do a full hole, a full hole, and then the partial in the middle, instead of overlapping, doin' the top, then the middle, then the bottom. This approach is gonna give us better results. The results being a series of overlapping pocket-holes. So here in the edge, instead of having a hole, we have a slot. So now, when we use this to fasten the solid wood shelf and top to this component, that solid wood component is gonna be able to expand and contract independently of this part. Works out really well. You might have to use a chisel and clean out just a little bit to get high spots out of here, that's about all it took right there, so that you have a distinct slot goin' here, and not a snowman. We don't want those high spots 'cause when the screw is in here, when the pocket screw is in here, we wanna make sure it can wiggle. It can move independently back and forth through that slot. Same thing, three more times, right? A bunch more times. We wanna have this in two places on every one of our short rails. we are ready for some assembly. And here's how things should look. With your rails, we've got pocket-holes in each end of each rail. Plus we've got the expansion slots in the short rails. You don't need 'em in the long ones. Now, the other thing I just did is I used an 8th-inch roundover on what'll be the bottom edge of each of the rails. You don't have to do that, but I like how that softens the corner. Let's talk about your pretty legs for a second. For our legs, when you cut those to size, make sure you use a stop block. Cut 'em all at the same time so they're all uniform in length. And as I mentioned earlier, you can either glue 3/4-inch stock together to make up your inch and a 1/2 legs, or just simply use 6/4 stock for this. Same thing with the roundover, each corner plus the bottom has been hit with that 8th-inch roundover to ease those corners. For assembly, I am a huge fan of blocking, gauging things whenever I can. So here's how this is gonna work. We're gonna do a leg and a leg. And it is, let's do a short rail and a short rail. And it is a 1/4-inch reveal from the face of the rail to the outside face of the leg. So I have in my hot little hands, 1/4-inch MDF. It's gonna go like that, and like that, and like that, and like that. Now, for our spacing on this bottom rail, I've got blocks cut to that size. Flushicity with the bottom of the leg. And all we have to do is rest the rail on top of the spacer. You don't have to measure. You don't have to make a mark. Top rail will simply be flush with the top of the leg. I have found that the Quick & Thick Glue works great for these end grain joints. Gettin' a little closer to the edge of my bench so it's easier to clamp stuff. Repeat that process, make the other short end. And then after the two ends are built, we'll connect the dots. We'll get everything put together on the long side. Now, just do the same thing in the other direction. Brr! There we are, 1/4-inch reveal out here. Now that this is done, the next thing we can do is get the size of our top, the size of our shelf so we can move forward with those components. Let me catch you up on what I have done in your absence. We got the whole leg and rail assembly put together. Then I did some sanding on the shelf and the top, they look wonderful. Boy, am I happy with how that glue seam came out. On the top, it has been completely cut to size. So there's a 1/2-inch overhang per side. Don't cut that to size until the base is done 'cause then you can take dimensions from the base and then figure out exactly how big the top needs to be. Then usin' a router just like I did on all the other components, 8th-inch roundover on all the top corners and the bottom corners. So that's eased, and done, and ready to go. The shelf is not quite gonna wanna go in there. We have to do just a little bit of work. We have to cut notches out of the corner. So let me show you how I'm gonna do this. I am a huge fan of transferring dimensions whenever I can instead of reading a ruler here, reading a ruler there. So I'm gonna take advantage of this tool in order to do that. What I'm gonna do is set this so that the edge of that is slightly inside my leg, table leg. That's what's gonna give me the measurement, the dimension I need in order to notch over here. So I'm about a 16th of an inch past the face of the leg. Lock, double check. Alrighty. Now, the way we're gonna do this is predicated on the idea that the shelf is already cut to the right size. The right size being, measure the outside dimensions of the table, outside of leg to outside a leg, that's the width. Outside of leg, outside of leg, that's the length, it's already cut to that rectangle. Now, all we have to do is take our gauge, make a mark, which that indicates outside of the leg to slightly past the inside of the leg, square that off, rinse and repeat. That being our waste wood on each of the corners. Cut this by whatever means works best for you. I'm gonna use a cordless circ saw. And part of the key to that will be knowing when to stop. I'm cutting this with the good face up. So what I'll do, I didn't give myself enough room, what I'll do as I make the cut is, as soon as I see the blade getting into that inside corner, I'll stop, do that from both directions. And then I'll show you what we have to do to finish. Alternatively, you could do this with a hand-held jig saw, that would work well also. Let's see if I gave myself enough real estate, not quite yet. That'll work. When I cut, waste side, so I wanna cut to my left of that line, then to my right of that line so I don't overcut. Stopping right at the other line. Then, it's not gonna fall out of there until I do this. What I'm doin' with these fingers is I'm pushing the saw against the side of the cut so that the blade registers against that side. Careful not to overcut. That was close, more of the same. Ready? Now, that's gotta come back out 'cause here's the easiest way to do the assembly, final assembly, well, sort of final. We'll talk about that. Do this part first. And this is a good way to get centered. Settin' this to the amount of our overhang. Check, then, I'm usin' still pocket-hole screws through the expansion slots that we put in the rails. And when you do this, brr, a couple of things. Make sure the screws are the right length so they don't go through your top. That would be bad at this point. And then when I drive this, if you're usin' a power drill, I wanna really lower the clutch setting so that the head of that screw doesn't embed in the bottom of that pocket. We want that screw to be able to move so that when the top wants to move, it can, when the top wants to expand and contract. And while I'm doin' this, let me say, for finishing 'cause this isn't finish sanded yet, so we're doin' this to make sure everything is workin' okay. But what is gonna happen next is everything gets taken back apart, sanded. And then the easiest way to finish these components is to have them off the table, get 'em stained, sealed, whatever you're gonna do, then put 'em back on. All right, now with this, center it left to right. Clamp it. Center it. Clamp it. Brr, there we go, nice little project, cool-lookin' table, I think, kind of a mission style goin' there. So remember, take everything apart, sand, seal, put it back together. And that wraps up our side table project.