I was at a high-end children’s toy store the other day with my son (1 yr old) and watched his eyes light up over a table full of Brio trains on a play table. As I watched how he used the table to play I noticed that the raised edge of the table kept the toys from falling to the floor as he played with them. It gave me an idea for a new addition to our living-room. We need places to store items like in a chest, but we need a table for my son to play at and …. well I need to build something.
So here are the plans I put together in Sketchup.
My plan is to make it all out of pine. Since it is a kid table I didn’t want to get carried away with expensive hardwood. The base will be chest-like but the top will lift off more like a tray rather than on hinges … so if he has a Brio Train set on it, we don’t have to mess it up when we need to get a blanket out of the chest.
The joints will all be dovetail and the panels will be glued up with tongue and groove rather than biscuits. (reasoning: I have a pair of tongue and groove planes I like to use, and I don’t own a biscuit joiner)
Off to the store to get some whitewood (pine in this case) I like the look of pine and even want some knots for character. I like the shimmery catoyance (french for cat eyes?) that pine gets, and I have found that the best catoyance is near the knots. In choosing the wood, I am looking for it to be straight (not looking to re-mill it) and not have knots near the edges. Those can be a bear to try to make a tongue from or a groove in.
While I head to the store, here is my Sketch-up plan if you want it. (ignore the sizes, I tried to scale it a bit after I drew it and ended up messing up the sizes)
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Previously
- Dutch Doors from Pine Six Panel Doors
I have young a chocolate Lab that often need to be confined to one room or another and I heat my home with a propane stove so that requires that door be open to allow the heat to flow throughout the house. For a while we used baby gates to restrict the dog to one […]
- New WorkBench
I like simple things tools that can be used for multiple purposes. I am not one that likes to fall into the pit of having every specialized tool ever created. That just gets way too expensive. I have been gradually modifying a simple bench that I have been using for years. It works pretty well […]
- Windproof Dock Bench (outdoor bench)
It is said often enough that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” and I believe that is true. I am also a believer that Thriftiness is the Father of Invention. This dock bench I made is a perfect example. …
- Cordwood Infill is an interesting option
I found this video today showing how cordwood (predominantly old cedar logs) can be used to create an infill wall between posts on a timber frame.Pictures from the cordwood workshop can be found… here. I wish there were more how-to’s described in the blog. But it was interesting to see another option. There is an […]
- Rustic Wooden Deck Railing
The deck on our log home overlooks the lake. It needed a railing for safety but we didn’t want a railing that would block our view. So we decided to use stainless steel cable railing, but needed the posts to fit the style of our log home. The forest around our home is primarily tall […]
- Door with Wooden Hinges
I found this great old door at the local architectural salvage shop. It was missing the glass in the windows, but it appealed to me because it used through mortises and wedge tenons. It also had working latch hardware and was only missing the handle. I found a nice brass handle at the same salvage […]
- Making Wooden Bolts
To make wooden bolts to hold the screens on the gazebo, I used 3/4″ dowel and used a wood threader to cut the threads on the dowel and a matching tap to cut the threads in the gazebo and the nut. The wood threader is a box with a hole for the dowel and a […]
- Screens with Wood Frames
To keep the Gazebo bug free, I needed to put some screens up. We get a lot of wind here at the edge of the lake so I needed them to be fairly strong and secure. I made the screen frames out of 1″x2″. The largest openings are three window panes wide so these screens […]
- Tools of the Timber Framing Shop
This is an interesting example of tools used in a timber framing shop. In my opinion most of these tools are not needed for amateur timber framers…only for people who make a living out of it, or are working on a large scale production. Either way, it is neat to see the tools at work.
- Timber Framing Workshop – learn timberframing
This timber frame workshop (to teach timber framing) was taught right in my town. Unfortunately it took place a few years before I got bitten by the timber framing bug. This was a bit of fun to watch.
- Siding the Gazebo – Shiplap
So with the gazebo up and the roof on, it was time to get the siding in place. You may remember from a previous entry that the siding was ship-lapped 1″x8″. This was applied one course at a time and fastened to the posts and studs with 1/2″ diameter dowel pegs. I cut the dowel […]
- Making a Mortise
As I’ve said before, a large part of timber framing centers around making round holes into rectangles. It usually starts with a drill to get rid of most of the wood. Then you finish up with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other. Here is a video of someone using large […]
- Auger Mortising Machine?
The Auger I used in the construction of my timber frame gazebo was very effective and only left me with two complaints: 1) It was challenging to keep it going plumb. (Crooked hole leads to crooked mortise) 2) It left you lopsided, because your right arm was always pulling down and your left arm was […]
- Circular Saw for the Serious Timber Framer
For the gazebo I built, you can get by with a couple of decent hand saws and a 7 1/4″ circular saw. However, if you plan to make a living at timber framing or are just timber framing a single house with lots of timbers that need cutting, there is a larger circular saw available […]
- Amish Barn Rasing
The scale of this is huge. What the Amish have going for them is lots of manpower. Here in the Finger Lakes region of NY we have a lot of Amish in the area. I have seen them put up barns and houses in similar fashion. You drive by one day and the field is […]
- Timber Framing Slideshow
I enjoyed this video as it has some very artistic shots of tools and wood together. Great closeups of joints too. It has a nice flavor of simpler times and the connections made by people putting up timber frame building. Timber Framing isn’t done for the speed, it is done for the fun of it. […]
- Larger Timber Frame Erection
This is a nice video that shows a large scale timber frame building being erected.Notice the need for a lot more people on hand. This one has some neat joints that go into the construction.
- Cedar Shingles
With the 1″x8″ ship lapped roof decking in place, it was time to start putting on the cedar shingles. Cedar shakes (thicker and more irregular than shingles) would have been preferred but I was over budget and also had no rapid source for obtaining them. So shingles were the next option as I could get […]
- Raising the Roof
With the rafters up and in place, it was time to start nailing in the roof decking. Yes I said “nails.” I was trying to avoid them 100% but there was no way around using them for the shingles and I didn’t want pegs working themselves out against the underside of the shingles and giving […]
