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Ron Stewart
689 posts
and
21 followers
in about 2 years
in about 2 years
More from Ron Stewart
Folding Work Table and Storage Bracket #4: Tabletop
This is
part 4
in a
8 part
series:
Folding Work Table and Storage Bracket
The tabletop is just a 1/4" plywood panel with a 2” wide sassafras frame. The frame has a 1” wide rabbet to hold the panel.
After cutting the frame sides to length, I cut the rabbet by making a series of passes on my table saw, starting on the center so the side was fully supported until the last pass.
I drilled dowel holes in the mitered ends, registering the side of my JessEm jig against the outside corner.
Glue up was simple because of the dowels. I used a strap clamp to pull the corners together. After I ensured the frame was square, I clamped two mating sides to the table to make sure the frame didn’t move.
While the glue dried, I cut the panels. Cutting the panels to the correct width was easy. Cutting them to the correct length was trickier. I ended up clamping the plywood to my straight-line/taper jig and using my bench to support the opposite end. That worked reasonably well.
Gluing and clamping the panel to the frame was easy.
Here are the tabletops resting against the wall where I’ll eventually store the tables.
The tabletops look better with square corners, but corners would get dinged up when I started using the tables (and setting the short end on the floor when opening or closing the legs). I needed to round them. I found a jar with a 1” radius and cut an MDF template that I used with a flush trimming bit.
Having rounded corners will also help if I ever decide to add some rubber T-mold around the tops’ perimeters.
With the tops complete, all I had to do was glue the support structures to them. I applied a generous bead of glue to the underside of the tabletop and to the top edges of the support structure.
I used my bench to ensure everything stayed flat.
There was a generous amount of squeeze-out. I should have just left it, but I decided to remove it. I tried the straw-cut-at-an-angle trick, but the glue tasted terrible, and I got really full… Kidding aside, it didn’t work that well, so I resorted to scraping out the glue with a skinny cutoff with a pointed tip. It was tedious, but it worked better than the straw.
2 Comments
You too funny! 😀
Those have a very sturdy core. I imagine the plastic tables will be eventually going to some friends/relatives?
We have about 10 of those things for craft shows, they are heavy and awkward and I certainly wouldn't use them in the shop, just kinda flimsy.
Nice trick with leaving the support for the notch cut until the last.
Thanks for the details Ron!
Those have a very sturdy core. I imagine the plastic tables will be eventually going to some friends/relatives?
We have about 10 of those things for craft shows, they are heavy and awkward and I certainly wouldn't use them in the shop, just kinda flimsy.
Nice trick with leaving the support for the notch cut until the last.
Thanks for the details Ron!
Thanks for appreciating my lame attempts at humor, Splint. :-)
I'll probably just move the tables under the house. (We have a walk-in crawlspace with a concrete slab on one side.) They'll come in handy if we ever have another garage sale or something. The tops are laminated particle board, so I might need to slap some varnish onto their undersides so they don't get moldy.
I'm not sure you'd think my new tables are any less flimsy. They are reasonably strong and stable, but they're still pretty light-duty tables. I wouldn't hesitate to sand or route on them, but I wouldn't put a heavy planer on one like the Woodsmith site shows. I'll use them mostly to hold stuff while I work. They'll be really handy for projects where I pre-finish. With those, any horizontal surface is fair game.
I'll probably just move the tables under the house. (We have a walk-in crawlspace with a concrete slab on one side.) They'll come in handy if we ever have another garage sale or something. The tops are laminated particle board, so I might need to slap some varnish onto their undersides so they don't get moldy.
I'm not sure you'd think my new tables are any less flimsy. They are reasonably strong and stable, but they're still pretty light-duty tables. I wouldn't hesitate to sand or route on them, but I wouldn't put a heavy planer on one like the Woodsmith site shows. I'll use them mostly to hold stuff while I work. They'll be really handy for projects where I pre-finish. With those, any horizontal surface is fair game.
