okay now it's time to build the top for ourcoffee table and i have got three 3/4 inch pieces of stock here that will be glued togetherto give me the dimension i will need for the final top and basically i am just going touse these pipe clamps to get everything together. i am going to go over under, over under withthe clamps and that will give me a nice even bond and make sure everything is as straightas possible. and what you want to do when
dowel joints woodworking plans, you are applying the glue is be sure to putglue on both edges. so both surfaces would have the nice strong bond of glue so will,so everything will be nice and secure and what i have done prior to this demonstrationis i have jointed each edge on the jointer. so i have a nice flat surface, it is alsoperpendicular to the two faces. so everything
should joint together nicely. then the other things you want to be mindfulof as you do these glue-ups is try if you can each board will have a cup to it, eitherconcave or convex. i try to alternate the cupping, so this board cups down, that boardcups up, the following board cups down and then if you are lucky it will end being afairly straight board and if you have the cupping all going the same way, you startto get kind of a barrel situation which is not which you want for your coffee table top.so what we will do is, i always like to do dry fit before we apply the glue and makesure that these pieces will fit together and then once we know the clamp is going to work,then we will add the glue and do it for real
and then from there we will let this set overnightand then we can draw our ellipse right on the top of this and start cutting that outas well. i am using a makeshift compass to layout thetop. first step is to mark off the top’s length and width. i am using the compass toset points for a guide made from an old shoe lace. the shoe lace lets you create a perfectellipse. it took me a couple of tries, but with a little practice the shoe lace guideworked like a champ. okay so now we started on the top, i wouldlike to jump over and talk a little bit about the curved legs. so what we are doing herewith the legs is these pieces each component will be comprised of three separate piecesof stock laminated together. it is not so
easy to see on the curve final piece, butprobably a little is to take a look at this one, so you can cut it is kind of more obvioushere components and i have dowels in between here holding these together. i am just talkingabout right now, i would like to talk about is the separate components how we put thosetogether. so we start off with your basic 3/4 inch pine stock, we will take two pieceslike that laminate them together with plain old wood glue. what i do beforehand thoughis i cut out a little bit to basically save all the extra gluing that i know i am notgoing to need, because here is a little more obvious on this piece. you can see the curve come through here andthere is really no need to have all that extra
glue and it is not so much about waste, itis really a lot easier to get these two pieces of stock to glue together securely if thereis less stock. each piece will be a little bit warped and by removing that portion ofstock it is less likely you will get the cupping, but it wont be quite as pronounced as if youhad a bigger piece, hopefully that makes sense. so anyway so these three pieces of them wewill glue them together after rough cutting them on the band saw and then what i willdo now, now this is one dry for the glue drips here so will scrape off all the glue and theni will run that through the jointer so i can connect these two pieces together with thethird center piece will look like this. so when we are all set and done we will havesomething that looks like so and how we get
to that step is when you use the pipe clampsfor these big pieces i will clamp all around the edge like so top and bottom and then forthis little guy here in the center, i will just use these hand clamps. i will actually use three of them one on thebottom, one on the top and one in the middle. so there is one thing about the center piecei want to point out. the orientation of the grain is a little bit different. the longway of the grain isn’t going front or back. it is actually going to be wider than it islong. the reason for that it is really an exception more than a rule is we want to havethe grain pattern going all the same way, but the width that we need to get there islittle longer like i said little wider than
it is long, so you don’t really ever seethat, it is almost the time when you are woodworking your grain goes a long way. this will be theexception. the first step when jointing the four legsis to scrape off the excess glue. now i will clean up the edges that will be jointed together.with the edges ready for dowels i will trace my leg design. this will give me a referencefor the dowel placement. it looks like i can squeeze in two dowels on each section. nexti will mark off my dowel holes. now i will use my new dowelling jig to mill the holes.this jig is very handy and not very expensive. i think it was around 30 bucks. with the dowelsplaced i will clamp up each leg. with any luck this arrangement should provide plentyof strength. now i can cut out a straight
edge i will need for the front of my legs.this edge gives me plenty of surface area for my three dowels. now it is time to roughout the curve on this leg with the band saw. two more legs to go after this.