mid century modern dining room table

alright this is gonna be a big one so let's just get right into it strictly speaking in ninety-nine point nine percent of situations a trapezoidal box is probably going to be less efficient than a rectangular box there's always going to be inaccessible spots within the cabinet itself and it's pretty unlikely that it's going to make

the most efficient use of the space in the room and yet here we are so after i had on my pieces of plywood for my carcass cut to their approximate final dimensions i started cutting the bevels on the casework you might remember the video i put out a couple months ago when i went over how to achieve this but i'll go over it again

here basically i'm going to want to end up with a trapezoidal cabinet where the sides angle in at 15 degrees off of 90 so 105 degrees or 75 degrees depending on how you're looking at it achieve this by setting my blade once to 37 and a half degrees and making half of the cuts with the workpiece vertical like this and the other half as you normally would

with the piece flat on the table if it's not making sense check out that other video i go into more detail there i'll link it below one of the problems that i ran into was at the bottom piece of my cabinet which is about 55 or 56 inches long is actually more than my table-saw can handle so to solve this i cut the bottom piece in half

made the bevel cuts and then glued it back together you're never going to know that i cut the bottom piece in half unless you were looking at the finished piece from the back the underside or the inside after removing the bottom drawer box so pretty much unless you share your dirty little secrets on youtube

you're the only one who's ever gonna know once i had all the pieces perfectly cut to size i moved on to a bit of joinery in the case where before gluing the whole thing up i use the hand router to cut two dadoes into the bottom piece that will eventually hold vertical partitions for support and for a couple of drawers then i use the dado blade to

cut a rabbet along the backs of all four pieces for an eventual back panel finally i tilted the dado stack to 15 degrees to cut the dado that will end up holding the shelf with everything ready to go i moved on to the glue up to get things started i use the tape clamp method to hear the

top and two side pieces you can see that i was going to use dominoes at one point for this but i don't like the way that things were lining up so i abandon the idea next i used a few band clamps to put the bottom on and really pull everything together tightly once that was dry enough i moved on to

the vertical partitions now you remember that i cut dado was in the bottom piece but not in the top the reason is that it's actually really tough to pre-cut those dadoes and get them to line up perfectly once the case is assembled when you're working with a trapezoid i've done it in the past but i wasn't using drawer so it wasn't as important

that they be perfectly aligned there's a little more wiggle room instead here i tried out something now i glued my partitions in the bottom dado and then made sure that they were at a 90-degree angle and clamped everything down then i just got a few little pieces of scrap walnut and glued them into the front and back on both sides to prevent

the partition from being able to lean one way or the other again these are only going to be visible from the underside because there's gonna be a face frame that's going to cover them eventually speaking of the face frame with the case totally out of the way i turned my attention to the hardwood portions of

the building namely the face frame and the base once i had figured out where i could get all my pieces from i started cutting things into oversized blanks i started out the miter saw then joined ripped and a whole lot of planning the holy quadrinity of milling stock for the face

frame i'm basically cutting those same angles that i used on the case only now instead of bevels i was cutting miters which is actually quite a bit easier so i dialed in my angle on the table saw crosscut sled and basically just worked my way around the entire unit cutting an angle marking the opposite end cutting it going on that piece and

then moving on to the next one and repeat next i started working on the base the base is made of four legs and two cross braces all the pieces are joined together with half laps i'm sure i'm gonna have trouble explaining your hair so hopefully having this drawing will help you kind of keep

things organized and understand which parts i'm talking about i started by cutting out the four legs the angle of the outside of the legs 15 degrees but the inside is a kind of unknown angle i wanted the leg to go from an inch wide at the bottom to three inches wide at the top so i marked out a line and then put my workpiece on this tapering jig

basically just line up the marks you made with the outside edge and then you're ready to go so here you're literally watching me use this jig for the first time ever i've had a bunch of people comment on my past videos saying that i needed to get a tapering chicken i gotta say they could not have been more right when i used to

make legs i would rough them out on the bandsaw and then clean him up either on the edge sander of the jointer i would conservatively say that this method has cut my production time in about a third and the results are actually better and more repeatable next i roughed out the shape of the cross braces by cutting them to length

and leaving them with a 15-degree angle cut on their ends so with the six pieces that make up the base cut to shape i started laying out the joinery so i found that the best way to do this is by actually clamping the pieces together and marking out where everything hits rather than trying to

base it off measurements it's also a really good idea to make some kind of mark that distinguishes what side needs to be cut and once i doesn't for cutting my half laps i started with the leg because that's the easier cut to make a pretty much just set my miter gauge to 15 degrees and it was ready to

go because the leg is going to end up at an angle of 15 degrees and this leaves a half lap that is parallel to the ground for the cross brace to rest it here i'm just double-checking things as i go then i moved onto the half laps for the cross brace this parts a little tougher the angle is that aforementioned unknown angle that was created by the inside

taper the leg so what i do here is line up the marks that i made with the miter slot my table-saw then i clamp it down and put my miter gauge fence up against the work piece to match the angle and lock it all down so that i can just repeat this cut four times the last thing that i had to do before i could assemble everything was probably the

hardest kind of the whole base that's the half lop that joins the two cross braces together you guys know that i'm a big proponent of marking things out so whenever i'm confused on a cut i kinda just start drawing as many guidelines as i can on it i find that the solution usually reveals itself to me while i'm doing this

that's kind of what you see me doing here so that i can get the pieces to join as closely to their centers as possible i worked it out and figure that i was going to have to run it across my dado blade at about 60 degrees which is a pretty steep angle as you're going to see then once i felt confident my marks i

made the cut after i test fit the cross braces and knew everything was good i could kind of breathe a sigh of relief and let my guard down a bit here i am mortising out some spots for figure 8 desktop fasteners you guys see me use these before i bought like a hundred of them about a year ago which will last me a good

long time funny story so after all the attention to detail that i paid making the base actually got careless here and installed the clips on the opposite side from the one that i had wanted to now i could have just as easily switched up my game planning used what was going to be the front and the back but i really like

this side better and again you can see the clips unless you're laying on the ground so i just went with it against the repeating theme of this build is don't look at it from below also don't let your guard down too early want to take a second to acknowledge all my patreon supporters new list this month are alan stephen drew ball and the

5 j's gm justin jason james and jack and i say it every month but seriously thank you if you want to find out how you can support the show too there's a link in the description and as always no pressure if you're not already make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can stay up

to date with all the new videos that i put out we had some really big stuff planned for this year and you're not gonna want to miss it so give to click x sangli gets thrown around pretty often is that form follows function roughly meaning the look of something should be dictated by its purpose so then is a trapezoidal box

contradictory to that sentiment i'd say no it isn't and here's why furniture can serve all sorts of different purposes but at the end of the day the best pieces should do more than just offer a place to put your things or rest your legs they should say something about who we are and make us feel something when we look at them in

other words an object's primary purpose or function doesn't always have to be about maximizing utility sometimes it can simply be looking good see you next time special thanks to rockler for sponsoring this video in the description there are links to all the products that i used check them out and see what they can do for you

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