Super quick project … bumped to the front of the line

Someone tossed this table top into the scrap bin back when I was at school and I’d been saving it until now. Turns out my nephew could really use a small table now that he’s standing and eating on his own.

I set to making my nephew a toddler sized table this weekend. I’d just learned of my sister’s quest to find him a table, so I volunteered my skills. I had just the table top for it so I figured why not. The goal here was to use only the wood I had on hand, and to make the project with a minimum of fuss. I expect the table to get out grown quickly and I don’t want to put needless effort into this particular project. Especially when I have some other things in the shop on the back burner.

This wide board I’d also been saving from school was big enough to cut my legs and aprons from.

First I cross cut it to get my leg heights exactly the same.

Then I ripped them to widths I thought looked right for the proportion of the table.

Once I had all my parts ripped I had to cross-cut to length. 

For some reason my mitre saw is cutting square again- perhaps I need a blade stiffener… my table saw I still have to adjust square to the blade though.

Here are the resulting parts. I made thin legs not by design but by necessity as I didn’t have enough of the same colour and size oak to glue up square legs.

I decided since this was to be a quick and dirty assembly to go with dowels. I have a dowel centering jig 

I marked a line across each joint…

Then I simply lined up my mark with those on the jig

I  then clamped the wood into my vise with the jig on it.

From there I  inserted my drill bit into the jig until it just touched the wood.  From the top of the jig I measured for my depth.

Then I drilled away 

And they fit perfectly

I appreciate the reliable results 

I had two assemblies down, next I needed to attach them to the other aprons

Dowel centers really came in handy at this stage. My dowel jig didn’t have a wide enough capacity to cut the joint in this orientation. So I popped in the dowel centers…

… lined the apron up with the leg and pushed the pins into the wood to mark my next dowel holes.

Here are the marks that were left by the dowel centers.

Then over to the drill press with a forstner to complete the holes

And that was all it took to cut the joinery.

Here’s the dry fit. I might cut the legs with tapers or some other design, I have yet to decide. This process took me three hours.

There will probably be several more hours left in this project. I still have some final things to work out before I can plop this down in front of my nephew. But I’m pleased to have slapped something together that fills a need and will be in use ASAP. I’ve also been avoiding  calibrating my table saw’s table square to the blade, and in so doing, I’ve been avoiding the shop. So it felt good to get going again.

Stay tuned for a continuation of the projects I made at woodworking school, among other posts.

Thanks for reading and happy woodworking!