I'm Brad and today I'm building mybiggest project yet this a seven foot dining table and it was a doozyI wanted this table to be really awesome so I enlisted help from my buddy Matt atRustic River Creations he makes custom tables in furniture south of Nashvilleand has this amazing
shop and some great machinery to match oh and a green Grovenow the dining table is gonna be seven feet long and almost four feet wide andMatt had some white oak boards that would fit this build perfectly if youdon't start with good lumber your projects can go south pretty
quickly sowe sorted through the boards checking their shape and then their moisturecontent now to check their levels we use the Orion 950 pinless moisture meterfrom Wagner meters the sponsor of today's video I'll talk more about themeter later but we calibrated it for the white oak that we were
using in pickboards for the top with similar moisture levels even though we picked some of thestraighter boards we're still dealing with rough lumber and these suckers werenine feet long in an inch and a half thick so Matt being the stand-up guy heis graciously offered to help me mill
the boards to get a flat face in onestraight edge he does this day in and day out so he's set up with all kinds ofawesome side feet and out feet on his machines they can handle this sizelumber after cutting the boards to rough length he showed me this
cool jig thathe uses to straighten the planks before hitting the jointerit's an eight-foot length of plywood that he attached two by fours and toggleclamps onto a foot board has a large bend or crook in it you can quickly geta straight edge on it with one run through the
saw as it cuts the front inthe back of the board that overhangs the jig after this we could hit hisridiculously large jointer for face and edge joining to get the board's flat onone side and one edge this 16 inch beast of a jointer made my 8 inch jointer
looklike Steve Rogers before the Super Soldier Serum how honestly I don't thinkI could have managed lumber this size in my current shop so if you don't have afriend like Matt and you can't handle this much lumber you can go to a lumberyard that sells both rough and milled
lumber we ended up with what you wouldcall s1 s1 II which means surface one side and one edge and this is gonna letme finish it off on my shop so you might be able to buy that at your local lumbersupplier and you can also still get a discount
versus buying s4s which isserviced on all sides if you need any custom rustic furniture please hit upMatt and he's gonna take care of you I brought the wood back to my shop and I unloaded it onto my table-sawto acclimate in my shop artem back in my shop and
now I'm gonna take the boardI've got a straightedge and one straight face and I'm gonna run them through theplaner and then the table saw to get them to the right size for their glue upI also set up a temporary work table I'm dealing with some really large boardshere
there's seven 1/2 feet long right now and the tables gonna be 4 feet wideso I don't have a full four by eight sheet of MDF I'm gonna use this as mywork surface because none of my benches are gonna be close enough to even beingable to handle all that
lumber so I'm gonna go ahead and mill this stuff upand then we'll get to the Assembly of the top and while I'm planing theseboards here's why I let them sit for a week in my shop in how I knew when theywere good now at Matt shop we use
the Orion 950 from Wagner meters to measurethe woods moisture content this is a premium pinless moisture meter it's gota seven year warranty and calibrated accuracy but what moisture is relativeto the environment that you're in so things could change at my shop now theOrion 950 has a feature called
equilibrium moisture content or EMC ituses a built in temperature and humidity sensor to calculate the percentage wherewood is gonna stop losing or gaining moisture in that specific environment Isaw that the EMC in my shop is nine point eight percent and when the board'sgot close to that I knew
that I was good to start milling if you want to get moreinformation about the Orion 950 I'll have a link down below in thedescription to it and thanks to Wagner meters for sponsoring this video and nowI just needed to rip the boards down to the final width for
the size top that Iwanted I find that top over 40 inches it's gonna give you the best chance atavoiding prying hands from stealing your food across the table now of course ifyou run out of a suits dealer you may want to go narrower for a full tableaccess got
all the boards cut to length and I put them out I went ahead andclamp them together because one of the things I want to make sure is that thejoints were all good you don't want to get into the glue up and then noticethat you have gaps so I
did see some areas where there were gaps and they'rea little bit too much for what I wanted and I squeezed them together and itstill didn't pull them tight so I'm gonna join a few of those boards thatare next to each other to get those joints just right and
then we're gonnago on to getting some alignment on them and when you're joining two boards thatwill be glued together the best option is to fold them up onto their sides likeyou're closing a book right along that jointthen take the boards to the jointer in that exact orientation now
this is gonnaeliminate any gaps caused by a slightly AB square setup on the jointer I wentthrough and I folded up each set of mating boards that had gaps and I ranthem through until everything fit tightly now after that I laid the woodback down on the table and I
set it up how I wanted it for my finished productI put a big V across all the boards with a pencil as a reference mark to keepthem in order then I went through and I made marks across the joints about 20inches apart for every board and this will
be for biscuits that I'm gonna usefor alignment during the glue up I cut the biscuit slots on the mating boardsusing the marks across the joints as indicators and just be careful to makesure that the biscuit joiner's fence is rested firmly on the board now withoutknowing it I cut
this slot too high as because the dust hose was hitting theboard behind it and not letting that tool set flat and I didn't recognize itI cut the slots in all the boards and then did one final dry fit just to makesure everything was good before I glue up
and I used the biscuits in there aswell now the last thing you want here is to run into an issue when you're threeminutes deep into assembly with glue drying and you're gonna start panickingbelieve me I have been there and after all that prep the glue up does go
a lotmore smoothly since you know how everything fits together and you'vealready done it once I glued one board at a time putting the biscuits in forregistration and lining the board's up with the marks that I've made earlier Ionly put glue on one side of each board and it's
always served me well gluingboth sides is overkill in my book and it's a lot Messier all you really wantto have is some good glue squeeze-out when you put the clamps on it and thenyou know that you've got a good joint I used a mallet to level out a
few spotsthat had crept up and then I put a few more clamps on the top and after 45minutes I came back and I scraped the partially dry glue beads off of the topit makes final flattening a bit easier plus it is super satisfying now the nextday I came
back and I cleared out any of the knot holes in the table and gave ita rough sanding – 80 grit in those spots this is basically just to get rid of anyglue around the knot holes so I can make sure I cleanly filled them the boardsare full of
different knots and imperfections which I love because itadds some nice character I marked all the spots that neededfilling with blue tape and then I mixed up some epoxy I'm using total boathigh-performance with a fast hardener for the filling here and instead ofleaving it clear I went ahead and
added some black mix all tint to itI think the black accents the knots without being too gaudy I filled all theholes and I used the torch to release the bubbles and help level it a bit Itried to top the knots off as the epoxy seeped into the cracks
but I came back acouple hours later in a few spots still needed more filling so if you want tohit them in one shot you're gonna need to babysit those voids and keep addingepoxy until it all hardens I decided to switch gears and jump to the metal basebefore finishing
the table top so then I could bounce back and forth between themwhile the finishes were drying the worst part about metal working in a wood shopis the metal shavings go everywhere so I decided to rig up a quick barrier tocapture it before I spewed steel all over my
shop I used big sheet ofcardboard that I got from a plywood stack and I cut and bent it to make a4x4 box that was 12 inches deep and I put that right behind my chop saw itonly took me a few minutes to make and it was well worth
the time in the effortI think this might work the table is going to have a metal base at each endmade from 1 by 3 rectangular tube steel the eighth inch thick each base is at-shape on the floor with vertical supporting legs going up to a top plateI started
off by cutting the six vertical leg parts to rough size that Icould manage the steel a little bit easier each upright is square at the topand it's gonna be joined into that lower T shape with a 45 degree miter I set thefins using a carpenter's square which I
think is illegal when you'remetalworking but then I just started cutting the 45s on the end of each legand I quickly realized something aren't a quick little tip here you may havejust seen that but one thing you want to think about when you're cutting the tubesteel is that there's
a seam so the way that this is made is exactly rolled inon each other in seamed here and that actually does have a little texture toit so I actually don't want these on the outside of the legs I want the smoothside to be on the outside so I
cut the miter on the wrong side on this one butwhat I'll do is I'll put this on the inside where you're not gonna see it inthe outside legs I will make sure to cut the 45s so that the smooth side is gonnabe on the outside I finished up
cutting all the minors on the legs and then Iswitched to the lower T pieces now the longer top portion ofthe tea has miters at both ends to match up with the legsfor this part and the smaller base piece I position the metal seam down towardsthe floor I finished
up by cutting all the legs tofinal size a scrap block clamped down to the bench gave a stop to make repeatablecuts and since I have six legs to deal with the chances are pretty high thatcan get out of whack so starting with the exact sized pieces at least
gives mea fighting chance now next I went outside and I ground down all the partswhere they would be welded to give me a good base for the filler material to goI'm by no stretch a good welder yet but I am learning I have this small foldingwelding table that's
a bit undersized for the task at hand but using someright angle jigs and clamps I was able to get everything aligned in in place myLincoln Electric Power MIG 210 mph and is more than capable for this job I lovethis thing because it's simple as dialing in the wire
size and the gaugeof the steel that I'm using and then I was ready to go I'm figuring out thebest way to assemble this was a good mental exercise and I'm pretty sure thatI do it the same way next time I started by attaching the upright legs to thatlower
piece that had the two miters on it i tacked those pieces in place andthen I marked and cut a top plate from quarter-inch flat bar stock the topplate is gonna extend a few inches past the legs on each side for extra supportfor the top I turned the assembly
upside down on topof the flat bar and then I pried it back into square using a spreader clamp theheat from the welds on those miners that I'd already done tends to move things inso the metal was inside a bit checking for square is really crucial before youweld your
final pieces after tacking the plate in place I went around and Ifinished all the welds on this square assembly and made sure everything wassealed up and then I clamped and welded together the third leg and that smallbase piece from there I butted this assembly against the square that
hadalready made to form the t shape and the last piece of the puzzle was to flip thewhole thing over and add another top plate to lock everything together afterthat I could repeat this entire process on the second base and these are supersturdy again I am NOT a great
welder by any stretch but I here grinder and paintmake you the welder you ain't so I got to grindingthe wall does now before painting the basis I hop backto the tabletop so that I could fit the threaded inserts I knocked off themajority of the epoxy with a block
plane and then I finished smoothing off thesurface with 80 grit sandpaper we have left the boards about 6 inches long whenwe milled them which was great because I did have a little bit of snipe on theend of them I measured in three inches from each side and I
set my tracks allsquare at 90 degrees to the long edge then I cut each end to give my finallength for the table after that I could drill the mounting holes on the top ofthe metal bases I put them at the ends of the tee as well as the
intersection Iused a step bit and I drilled them a little bit oversized to allow for woodmovement then I hooked the base up onto the top which was bottom side up so thatI could mark for the inserts and that grimace on my face means I need to stopskipping workouts
I put the base 12 inches in from the end and I centered iton the table and then I drew pencil marks through each hole and after that Ican take the bases off and prime and paint them outside with a matte blackfinish while the paint was drying I worked
on finishing up the top I added achamfer on all the edges of the table and if you start off putting the chamferon the corner first and then you rout around it on the top you get this reallycool-looking detail on the corners I finished up routing all the other
edgesand corners and during the whole ordeal we had to flip the top over a coupletimes I really can't understate how heavy this thing is or how much I needto work out but after I routed all the edges and sanded everything smooth Idecided to go ahead and apply finish
to the bottom before doing the inserts I'musing rubio pure as my finish and it goes on easily but you have to rub it inwith a white scotch brite pad so i thought it would be smart to put it onmy sandra do this I poured finish on one spot
and then I put the sander down inthe finish and turn it on and spread it around and this worked great but then Ipoured a big line of it and went into that line of finish with my sanderrunning full board this did not work great it's not finishedall over
my shop so don't do that anyway after that I used a center punch where Ihad made the pencil marks for the inserts and then I drilled out the holesfor them and I installed the inserts with an impact driverwe flipped over the table again so that I could finish
off the top and here's myrecommended approach spread the finish on so that it's not pooled anywhere andit's got a nice coverage then you can go back with a sander with a white pad andbuff things in unless you like spraying oil all over your shop then by all meansgo
the other way now the nice thing about this table is that you can move itseparately and attach it to the bases with set screws and I'll have to waituntil after lockdown to get some help so I can move this into my dining room andget my dining room table
out of there and everything in place I've got somemore build up for you you can check them out right over there and I will see youin the next video where we're gonna build something awesome
