• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Oak dining table build (complete, and inside)

I reckon you've been carefully planning ahead for every successive stage of this - it's looking great. Definitely one for a tidy, spacious workshop though.
 
AndyT said:
.....Definitely one for a tidy, spacious workshop though.
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I spent 2 or 3 hours cleaning the workshop prior to starting the finishing. I took 8 or 9 big bags of shavings and dust out, and swept and hoovered around carefully so that I wasn't kicking dust up whilst the finish was wet over the next week. But yes, I know how lucky I am to have a workshop big enough to cope with something of this size.
 
AndyT said:
...or a series of little carvings held on pegs at the back... Shields representing defeated county sides maybe?
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There are 18 county sides, and I've been on the winning side against all of them. I've got 8 holes.... :)
 
Or you could carve a whole set and let your guests choose? Or add five extra holes along each side?

(Devising hypothetical projects for other people is much easier than getting going with making anything myself!)
 
AndyP said:
I look forward to seeing those extensions. Makes me wonder if I can do something similar on my table. I have come very close a number of times to cutting it in half, lengthwise, and adding an extra board to make it wider
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They're going to be really simple, Andy:

extension.jpg

There'll be a little wedge to hold it in place behind those guide block things that I inset a day or two ago.
 
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Love the shields idea. Table's are interesting. Just so we can expand capacity this week I bought a solid oak table from ebay. Extendable from 1.2 to 2.2 metres and the same width as two of our bigger tables - 1 metre. Cost £125 cash all in, delivered today. I will refinish it as it has poly varnish which I don't like, though it is in good condition. It is remarkably well made with bolt on legs (all oak braced) and a stainless steel roller mechanism for the top and heavy duty metal latches. No idea who made it but the legs are laminated oak like you see often with newel posts.

I almost bought for under £40, a 2.4 metre hardwood table in what the seller said was rosewood but probably wasn't. Six very well made chairs also went for under £40.
 
I'm not going to test your boredom threshholds with endless pictures of varnish drying. I got the first coat on today, after a tiny bit of de-nibbing from yesterdays staining. I mixed up the 1:1:1 mixture as always, then slapped it on, and wiped it off after 10 minutes or so:

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A couple of plane handles are getting done at the same time. I'm not sure this is dark enough, but that can be adjusted.
 
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Lovely deep colour, almost conker brown haha.
I am literally just about to test some stains to get to that sort of colour, I’ve never use van dyke crystals and starting to think I’ve been missing out.
 
Cabinetman said:
.....I’ve never use van dyke crystals and starting to think I’ve been missing out.
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The real plus of van Dyck crystals is that you can adjust the colour by adding or subtracting. The thing to bear in mind is that it is water based, so it will raise the grain unless you go through the procedure I did.
 
Mike, what do you use to wipe off the finish?

I use some old linen shirts, no fluff, and then hang them up to dry. (combustion)
For final rub it is old jocks.
 
Phil said:
Mike, what do you use to wipe off the finish?

I use some old linen shirts, no fluff, and then hang them up to dry. (combustion)
For final rub it is old jocks.
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I use kitchen roll (paper towels) at this stage. From memory, I think I use a cotton cloth for the last coat. You de-nib between coats but not after the final coat, so the paper is fine for all the intermediate stages, but you need something like cotton for the last one.
 
The table's looking good, and well done I say for being able to achieve what was required in the time frame.

On a side note though, did you ever resolve the moisture content thing that was batted about at one point? Slainte.
 
Richard said:
.....did you ever resolve the moisture content thing that was batted about at one point? Slainte.
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I didn't. I didn't generate an offcut which wasn't from the end of a board. My moisture meter says it's all around 7% now, and timber in my house is at around 8%, so I expect things to remain fairly stable once it comes indoors. The ends of the breadboard ends will be the tell-tale.
 
Mike G said:
I didn't. I didn't generate an offcut which wasn't from the end of a board. My moisture meter says it's all around 7% now, and timber in my house is at around 8%, so I expect things to remain fairly stable once it comes indoors. The ends of the breadboard ends will be the tell-tale.
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Great. 8% is about what I'd expect in late autumn/winter for wood in most houses here in the UK, assuming there's reasonable insulation and similarly reasonable climate control. Generally internal furniture gains moisture as summer approaches and up to early autumn before starting to dry again.

I'm still intrigued by the idea that the merchant is perhaps intentionally selling timber they kiln that's possibly as dry as 5% MC. If you ever establish that that's what they're doing I'd be interested to find that out because it seems to me to be adding significant expense to their product and potentially detrimentally overdrying it. Slainte.
 
Richard said:
I'm still intrigued by the idea that the merchant is perhaps intentionally selling timber they kiln that's possibly as dry as 5% MC. If you ever establish that that's what they're doing I'd be interested to find that out because it seems to me to be adding significant expense to their product and potentially detrimentally overdrying it. Slainte.
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I'm back there shortly, so I'll definitely pick away at this a little more. I suspect cock-up rather than conspiracy, though. I suspect the system is a bit clumsy and semi out of control, and that some batches are just over-cooked accidentally.
 
Darn, Mike, I step away for a couple of months and you pull another giant-sized project out of nowhere. :)

I'm sorry I missed your letter carving while it was going on. I really like carving letters in oak as long as they're big enough. The only thing I would have suggested would be to gild the letters. Gold leaf isn't all that expensive nor all that hard to apply, and against that dark stain would really stand out, even in the shadow under the table.

Kirk
 
That might have been great fun, and an interesting skill to learn, Kirk....... but might have been a bit too showy. I'm happy that it's subtle.
 
I did 4 coats of 1:1:1 on everything other than the table top, which got five. At this time of the year that meant long days of heating on in the workshop. The first coat took a very long time to dry, but thereafter each coat was dry within 24 hours.

With the aid of a piano-moving dolly, it only took two of us to get it in:

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The old pine chairs look ridiculous around it:

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I got the colour wrong. It's always the bloody finishing!

Never mind, it's too late to do anything about it, but at least it matches the Victorian dresser thing in the corner.
 
I think it looks very fine indeed.
What’s wrong with the colour? Unless you were trying to match the chairs of course?
We (well Madame really) decided that we are going with dark Oak stain on a mantelpiece I’ve nearly finished. Coming round to the idea after all the natural oak I’ve produced.
 
Well done Mike. That seemed like a serious amount of work in a hurry. Looks good - even for me and I don't like stains much these days. To make it look Tudorish, it now needs some abuse from your serving maids and footmen.....
 
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