Timber Frame Tools

Out in our pool cage we had a glass table top with metal legs that was rusting. The humid salt air on the coast of Florida is not kind to steel parts.  I wanted to make a table that was nicer and could seat more people.  I also had a bunch of Cypress from two trees we had cut down in 2019.  When I cut off the sides of the butt of the Cypress tree when I was making my Console table I knew I had the makings of a pair of trestles.

The butt of a large Bald Cypress tree from my back yard

I first cut these pieces off in 2020.  I just finished the table today. YES I have been working on this table for 4 long years. It took up a huge amount of space in my shop. Of course there were lots of other projects that intermingled with this one, but this one seemed to drag on, largely because of its scale. It was not the kind of thing I could just work on an hour here and an hour there. I am so relieved to have it done.

You may not see it, but when i saw these, they screamed that they wanted to be trestles on a table.

Scale is hard to tell from this photo, but these trestles are ~3ft across.

The design calls for battens on sliding dovetails on the bottom of the table top. These should help keep things flat, and provide a way to attach the top to the stretchers.

I sketched some ideas I had.

Notice that I played around with whether to have the trestles out toward the end (lower sketch) or in a bit so that people could sit at the ends (upper sketch).  In the end, the table would be just shy of 8ft long and comfortably seats 6 people.

Follow along as I share the build.

1. Making the trestles
2. Making the stretchers
3. Making the battens
4. Making the table top
5. Finishing the table