Assembling the walnut table

Now that we've gotten everything cleaned up and the pieces are all shaped, it's time to put this table together. Glue up and assembly is quite a process. The pocket screws attaching the base to the top are the only metal connectors in here, but everything has to be assembled in a specific order and with some precision in order for this table to end up ok.

I had a bad idea to add dowels to the top of the legs and make a mating hole in the underside of the top to give some more glue surface. That's totally not needed, and I ended up cutting off 3 of the 4 dowels. The one that I left ended up being my starting point for assembly; it was a rear leg.

Glue the leg into the top, then put glue on both the mortise and tenon for the back, and glue into the other rear leg. Add the pocket screws and more glue to get that attached to the top. Then glue and screw the sides into the back legs. I cut the bottom with notches for all four legs, but that means it has to be installed in the slot before the front legs are attached.

Dry fit with markings

Looks like a real table

With the bottom in, everything has been glued and screwed

So I can't attach the base to the top with the bottom in place, and I can't install the bottom with the front legs in place. Quite the pickle!

Next I have to build a drawer. The fourth side that I had originally cut became a drawer front, and I wanted to try some new stuff in there. For the sides, I had some rough scrap pine laying around. With the base assembled and attached I could finally get the exact size I needed. I didn't want to have any hardware involved so the drawer had to be the exact height, width, and length to fill the void.

rough pine

Glued up drawer

drawers take a lot of clamps

Half blind dovetails are really hard

dovetails

The finished drawer

I've never done dovetails before. Always wanted to try, and I've done finger joints before (think square dovetails) but never dovetails like this. I didn't even have a template to draw out the angles, so I just made something up and went for it. The joints for the back of the drawer were pretty straightforward, I was able to make straight through cuts and clean out the voids. But attaching the sides to the front... that's another story. This was the first and the last time I will try half blind dovetails. I put a dovetail bit in the router and tried to hollow out the tails. The height was right, but it totally tore up the sides of the board. It was really much harder than I was expecting.

I can see myself doing dovetails again, but not half blind. Dovetail a box and attach it to the drawer front.

Now those damn stretchers....

Stretchers seem a bit short?

Holding the shelf in place

I ended up having to cut up those stretchers pretty hard to get the half lap joint to fit. But eventually it did fit, and I glued the shelf on top.  It ended up being a really nice touch.

Also a nice touch, I picked up a 1/8" cherry dowel and cut some pegs out of that. Every mortise and tenon joint was reinforced with 2 pegs, cut flush. The cherry created a really nice color contrast that shines in the finished product. And it helps strengthen the joints. I put pegs in where the stretchers attach to the legs, and used them to attach the shelf to the stretchers as well.

Now with more shelf

Note the cherry dowel pegs into the top of the legs

really came together

This whole thing came together really well. I'm still cautious about how much weight I can put on the bottom shelf. But seeing all of those complex joints come together tightly is a miracle. Now all we have to do is put a finish on it! But how do you finish walnut?