Using Veneer to Improve Laminated Table Legs

Two years is a long time to be working on a simple dining table.  This project technically does not have so many steps that it should take so long.

Why is it that it is still under the "in-progress" heading, you ask?

The answer is, I have no idea. This is just one of those projects that is taking me forever, mostly because this project really hasn't excited me yet.

No reason, just 'cause.

We are really getting tired of using an old, borrowed, ugly, flimsy dining table in our Garmisch apartment, though. That means it is time to light the fire under this table.

I mean - light the fire under me to finish this table. Lighting an actual fire under this table would be a perfectly good waste of lumber.

Ahem.

Moving on.

Here is the state of this project at the moment:

• The top is glued up and partially flattened
• All of the legs are laminated together - I used the same 8/4 stock that was used for the top.
• The legs were flattened on a face and one edge squared up by hand before I took them to Dictum to finish the milling using their power planer.
• Stock for the aprons has been chosen.

What is left to do:

• Make the legs look pretty.
• Smooth the table top after cutting to finish size.
• Cut the aprons to size and smooth them.
• Cut mortise and tenons.
• Glue-up the base using drawbore pegs.
• Attach the top with shop-made buttons.
• Finish.

I thought I didn't really have that much left to do, but now that I am looking at this list, it appears I haven't really started yet.  So much for two years worth of work on this thing.

Let's move on.

First on the list is making the legs look pretty.  I made the legs by laminating two pieces of 8/4 lumber together and milling square.

I did the best I could to match color and grain up, but while a couple looked OK, the others just wound up with so obvious a glue line that there is no way these legs would look anything but "jarring."

My solution was to pull a trick I used on a quarter sawn oak arts & crafts dining table I built for my in-laws a while back: veneer used to give the appearance of quarter sawn grain on all four faces of the leg.

Here's my process: My cousin lives near a veneer factory, so I sent him over to get me about a square meter of veneer for this project.  They just laughed, as usually the smallest they would sell is about a billion square meters of something.  They gave him this roll of walnut veneer, probably about ten square meters, and charged him ten Euros.  I think this was probably for their coffee money while they were able to get rid of some scrap or a sample or something.

What I got was a nice roll of veneer with about a dozen pieces from the same flitch.

The table legs in need along with the veneer I had to work with.

It is perfect having so much for this project, as I can really be picky in picking the perfect part of a piece of veneer to match the leg I want to put it on.

I decided to do the ugliest leg first, one which had a nice dark piece laminated to a board that showed sapwood.  What I needed to do here was find a section of the veneer that had no flatsawn grain, and which had sapwood all along one edge.

Although these sheets of veneer all came from the same part of the same log, they were not all exactly the same.  The ones closer to the bark side of the tree had a little more sapwood than the others.  I chose one of these and went to work.

The unrolled veneer.

The next step was to actually glue everything up.  I decided to do one face of two legs at a time, clamping them both up together with some termite poop for clamping cauls.

Here is a photo of everything set up.  I have just poured glue on both of the legs.

Notice I'm working at the kitchen table.

I used a purpose-made glue roller to even out everything for a nice glue up.

This shot shows most of the tools I used.

I couldn't photo the process, but all I did was place the veneer in the orientation I wanted on the table leg.  I used that yellow roller (not a paint roller, it has a harder rubber surface) to flatten everything the best I could.  Sometimes the veneer shifts around at this point, so one must be careful it doesn't move too far out of position.

I found out that the veneer can curl up when you just place it on the glue dry.  No biggie, as it will be flattened down again when clamped up, but it makes it hard to tell if it is in the right place or if it shifted.  To fix this I just wiped the dry side of the veneer with a damp cloth.

Once that was done, I stacked them up so the two veneer faces faced each other, separated by some termite poop and wax paper.

The whole glue up.

Here is a shot of this table leg in it's eventual intended location.  How ironic!

The legs only required being in the clamps for an hour or so, according to the veneer glue I used.  I then repeated the process on the opposite faces of these two legs.

Here is the result:

fresh out of the clamps

No more ugly laminating lines!  Looking at these legs, it really is hard to tell which faces are veneered and which ones are solid wood.  You really have to look at the end grain to tell.

So far, so good.  We'll have to wait until the finish goes on to really be sure everything matches, but to my eye right now it appears to be a perfect match.

Two more table legs to veneer up in this way and I'll be ready to move on with this project.  Another two years and maybe the table will be done!

How To Clean Up Glue Squeeze-Out

It's easy.  Here's my secret:

Use hide glue.

photo courtesy titebond.com

Any hide glue does the same, but I had recently used this Titebond product, which I have had excellent results with. 

Today I had to clean up some leg blanks I laminated together for my walnut dining table.

Stop laughing, YES... this is the same table I have been working on for about two years.

Normally when I clamp something up, I use a wet rag to wipe off as much squeeze out as I can.  I can not remember having had any trouble doing this with hide glue.  I have heard some have had troubles with PVA glue showing up during finishing when wiped off this way, though.

When I did these legs, I must have been inattentive for this step, as they all dried with lots of sloppy squeeze out.  In fact, one leg looked like it had been painted with glue.

What to do?  I thought about scraping it with a chisel or some other tool, but I hate using my sharp tools for this.

Instead, I got a bucket of hot water and a rag.  I would have used my heat gun, but couldn't find it.  I realized that using it with a bucket of water might not be such a good idea anyway.

Duh.

But the hot water worked way better than I thought.  I just squeezed enough water out of the rag so it wouldn't drip everywhere, and laid it over the dried squeeze-out.  After a few seconds I just started scrubbing away.

Hide glue is reversible with heat and water, so it doesn't take much to clean it up in this manner.  That one board that was completely caked with hide glue was cleaned up in less than a minute.

Water will raise the grain, but after a glue up my work needs to be planed anyway.  After cleaning up this dried squeeze-out I planed a reference face and an edge with a handplane on each of the legs, then drove them over to Dictum to dimension in their power planer. 

Perhaps in another two years this stupid table will be done!

Stool Build - Complete

After the first day, I spent a couple hours cleaning up everything, and applying a final coat of Dick wax to the legs and a coat of beeswax to the seat.

Trimming the legs in the seat.

A final scrape before finish.

Working on the stretchers.  I forgot to mention that the through-dowels were used instead of my intended mortise and tenon stretchers to save a bit of time.  I'm glad I did.

The through dowels were a design modification I decided to incorporate part way through the build.  I could see that processing rough stock to appropriate dimensions, cutting and fitting tenons and pounding mortices (considering the noise-making stipulations in our building), was a lot to expect for this one-day build.

I realized I had some store-bought 16mm beech dowels that would work perfectly with a 5/8" hole drilled with my brace.  No shoulders, no nothing else.  Just glue and a wedge, easy peasy.  We'll see over time if this joint is strong enough.  Had I all the time in the world, I would prefer drawbored tenons for this step, but I totally leapfrogged all of the time required for that joint in using the dowels instead.

Final trim on the stretchers.  After trying other tools, I decided the best tool for the job is a chisel.

This is a three-in-one shop appliance.  Besides sitting on it, it makes a fine extension to my sawbench...

And my tool chest.

Behold:  Stoolerable!

Thanks to Flair Woodworks for organizing this build.  It was a total blast!

View the rest of my Stoolerable build here.

Stool Build - 8:00

Glue up.

Not too much to say here.  I would say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I had no time to shoot photos of the glue up while actually doing it.  All you'll get is this one photo.

Not too many pictures of the glue-up.  I was busy.

I will say that applying a coat of wax first did greatly assist in cleaning up the squeeze out.  Also, the wedges did a good enough job of holding everything together without the need of clamping anything.  While I wouldn't yet trust it to sit in, it is plenty stable enough to continue a bit of the construction process.

If doing the stool early isn't cheating, is using a laser beam to get the stool the exact same height as my tool chest?

It looks like a stool!  This is as far as I got the first night.

Next up:  Finishing touches.

View the rest of my build here.

Stool Build - 7:00

It's weird how long a project stays in the "Almost Done" catagory, isn't it?

What next needs to happen is to prepare all the pieces that will get a wedge in the round tenon.  To do this, all that is required is to saw down the middle of the tenon.  This will leave a kerf wide enough to take a wedge.  To be on the safe side, I first drilled some holes with my eggbeater Millers Falls #5 to stop the cut, and hopefully prevent the wood from splitting all the way down.

Drilling a hole to prevent splitting during the wedging action.

Holes drilled.

Sawing the kerf for later wedging.

Hand-sawn wedges in beech.  Oh yeah!  I forgot to say the stool is in scots pine, with the stretchers and wedges in steamed beech.

Next up:  Almost done!

View the rest of my build here.

Stool Build - 5:00

Shaping the seat and some little stuff.

I had no thought as to what the final shape of the seat should be.  I decided just to design it on the fly at this point.  I thought leaving it square was a bit lame, so I sawed off the corners (once again at the exact angle of, "that's about right"), chamfered the sharp edges, and generally fiddled with it until I was happy.

Chamfering...

And a little wax before glue-up.

Next up:  Holes and wedges.

View the rest of my build here.

Stool Build - 4:00

Time to see if Moby Dick works.

Moby Dick is formerly a home-made scrub plane I re-shaped into a compass plane for hollowing the seat.

I'm not counting this as a new tool since I spent no money to convert it.

I laid out the part of the seat to be shaped by sitting on it, and tracing around my bottom.  I then used a compass to even out my markings a bit. 

Will Moby Dick work?

Eventually, I decided this was a little uncomfortable and hollowed some following sitting on it to test the fit.  I found the most comfort by hollowing it out past the back.  It should still stand upside down easy, as the sides are still in a flat plane - I did not touch them with Moby Dick.

Seems to work great across the grain.

Clean up with a scraper.

Next up:  Fine tuning the seat.

View the rest of my build here.