oak dining room table

- the wood whisperer is sponsoredby powermatic and titebond with a special finishingfeature sponsored by osmo. all right, so today we've gota bit of a different project. my brother-in-law just moved to colorado and had this table fromhis previous house. now it was perfect for that house, 'cause it was a little bit smaller, but in the new house there's more room. so a table of this small diameter,

i think it's like 36 inchesor something like that, it just isn't really working for them. two adults, two children, they need something a little bit better. and i checked it out and it's really just pocketscrewed into the top. the base is in pretty good shape and it's a painted base. so i figured, you knowwhat, let's put a top on

that matches their new floors and see if that doesn't worka little bit better for them. so it's a fairly simple construction, just a bunch of red oakboards cut into a circle. but before we do that let me show you the underside of this table, so you can see why i decidedthis would be easy to do. so each apron just has acouple of pocket screws up through the apron and into the top,

so it's a super easy swap out and no need to make anentire base for this one. so let's get to it. because i want the tableto have a more substantial look and feel i'mstarting with 5/4 red oak. the boards are cut strategicallyto remove any major knots or temperamental grain. (machines whirring) once we have a decent layoutwe can number the boards

to keep them in order and then start the milling process. because some of the boardsare wider than my jointer i'm gonna use a special trick that involves removing the jointer guard. if you do this please exercisethe highest level of caution and don't be a dingus. and be sure to replace the guard as soon as the operation the complete.

the wood whisperer incorporatedis not responsible, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah. the board is jointed like any other, only there's a small portion of the board that overhangs the bedand doesn't get cut. after a few passes we've got a nice, flat eight inch wide sectionand then a small rough strip. at the workbench we'll use a hand plane to remove that small strip

and make it level withthe rest of the board. there's a variation of this technique that uses a piece of plywood and a planer, which can be faster if youhave a lot of these to do, but for a small piece ortwo this method is nice. plus it gets your heartrate up for a few minutes, which isn't a bad thing. now that we have a nice,flat surface for reference we can send the boards through the planer.

it's a great feeling nothaving to sacrifice board width just because of the size of your jointer. by the way, that goodlooking guy right there is nicole's brother, jason, not him, that's george costanza. believe it or not, he'smy new shop helper, so you might see him,or at least his arms, in a lot of my future videos. not him, him.

the boards are all rippedto width at the table saw removing any gnarly bits from the edges. with the boards togetheri'll mark the center and then use a straightedge to get a ballpark idea of the circle size that we need to cut, which has a 24 inch radius. to assist with the glue up i'll drop in the occasional domino. this is by no means a necessary step,

but on a wide panel like this the dominoes make for astress-free glue up experience without the need for giant cauls. for a little more working time i'll be using titebond extend. the glue is added to each edge, rolled, and the dominoes are popped in. i'm lucky to have somelong parallel clamps, but pipe clamps also work greatfor big glue ups like this.

once the glue is setup, but not fully cured, i scrap it away with a card scraper. after the glue is drythe surface is sanded to remove any glue residue. now it's time to cut a circle. we'll flip the table upside down and prepare to make a simple trammel arm. i'll cut a piece of 1/2 mdfto about eight inches wide and 36 inches long.

these aren't critical dimensions. it has to be long enough tomake the 24 inch radius swing and wide enough to hold the router. regarding the thickness, just make sure that your bitcan plunge all the way through when sitting on top of the trammel arm. one side of the boardwill get a small dowel pin a few inches from the edges. i'll then measure fromthe center of that point

to another point exactly 24 inches away. my bit is 3/8 in diameter, so i'll measure 3/7further to help to find where the router bit will plunge. for the dowel pin i'lldrill a 1/4 inch hole through the trammel arm. on the underside of the table i'll drill the same holein the absolute center, making sure that i don'tgo all the way through.

using a 1/4 inch dowel pin i can drop the trammel arm in place and you can see how this is gonna work. to make the dowel connectiona little bit more rigid i'll add some ca glue on the jig side. to help the arm slide with less friction i'll wax the bottom. on the other end of thejig i'll line up my bit and trace the shape of my router.

this helps me line upsome double stick tape for securing the base to the trammel arm. if i were doing morethan one table like this i'd probably make somethinga little bit more secure to mount the router, but this is gonna workfor just one circle. because the bit willeventually go through the top we need a sacrificial surface underneath. i'll use some more double stick tape

to secure the tabletop as well as the off cut material. we really don't want anythingto move during this process. i'll go about 1/4 inch per pass working my way around the circle and sucking up any dustthat remains in the groove. if you're a fan of cartoons you're probably expecting meto fall through the floor. meep meep.

and just like that wehave a perfect circle. now as a completely unnecessary step i'm going to cut a facegrain plug for that 1/4 hole that we drilled in thebottom of the table. ah, that's better. for the profile of the top we're departing from atraditional ogee profile and going with somethinga little bit more modern. this is a big honking bit,

so i'm gonna use my big honking router. i'll take it in a few passes. on the bottom edge we'll adda small 1/8 inch round-over. the bottom gets a quick sandingto smooth everything out. since it's the bottom wewon't really go crazy here with surface prep. around the perimeter we'llgive some extra attention to the edge where theremight be some lines from the multiple router cuts.

for the show face of the top we'll start by scraping the surface to remove any mill marks. scraping is nice, because itreduces the amount of sanding that we'll need to do. i do like sanding with at least my final grit after the scraping. scraping leavings a decent surface, but i really prefer the uniformity

of a 180 or a 220 grit sanding. by the way, when sanding alarge round-over like this it's best to sand with the grain to avoid any cross-grain scratch marks. red oak has really deepgrain and open pores, so for a kitchen table i thinka pore fill is called for and we only need to fill the top side. this particular filler is water soluble and this can is pretty old,

so i'll scrape the solid material out and then dilute it with water to the consistence of pancake batter. mm, pancakes. the filler is spread across the surface, driving it into the pores. once dry we'll scrape the excess and sand the entire surface smooth. the idea here is to keepthe filler in the pores,

but get the rest of thesurface back to bare wood. for the finish i'm usingosmo polyx-oil pure. this is their low voc product. it applies pretty easily by putting a little bit on the surface and then spreading itout to a very thin layer. now for full disclosure,i have been testing osmo on several projects overthe course of the last year and i did purchase all ofthose materials myself.

i've been very happy with the results and after filming this project i approached them aboutsponsoring the video. so what are they paying me for? basically to spend a littlemore time showing you what products i'm usingand how to apply them. nothing more. as always, my opinions are my own and i was gonna use this finish

with or without the sponsorship. anywho, once the finish is spread out i go back and use a papertowel to quickly wipe away any spots where i have some excess. now i let it sit for an hour and then come back and repeat the spreadingprocess one more time. a finish like this hassome distinct advantages. first, it's low voc.

you still want some ventilation, but this stuff isn't gonnaknock you on your butt. second, it's fairly durable. it's not really a true film finish, but the layer of wax leftbehind is definitely hard and does a great jobof locking out liquids. third, it's really easy to apply. it's pretty much dummy-proof. fourth, it's incredibly easy to repair.

when this table gets scratched up we'll be able to do spot repairs without having tocompletely refinish the top. once i let that secondcoat sit for another hour i come back with a whitescotch-brite type pad on my random orbit sander. this not only drives thefinish deep into the pores, it also lightly abrades thesurface, making it super smooth. i then finish off the surfacewith a terrycloth buffer.

the process is then repeated on the top. the only differencewith the top side finish is that i'm gonna add in anadditional level of protection using their topoil product. it's a high solids finish that's completely food safe once it dries. i'll wipe on a thin layerusing an applicator pad. you can also roll it onwith a microfiber roller or buff it in with scotch-brite.

now since this is red oak i'm a little hesitant toapply a thicker layer, because it's likely to resultin air bubbles in the finish. so i'll just wipe ontwo thin layers instead. no runs, no streaks, just aperfect smooth, satin finish. it's cool. nice overhang too. - [man] yeah. - so there it is, a prettyquick and easy upgrade.

now it's a table that'sfit for a family of four. nice finish on there that they can beat up and if they're anything like my kids they're gonna take forks anddrag them across the surface, so we've got a finishthat's easy to repair, which is a good thing. so all in all, a prettyquick weekend project and it looks pretty good. (gentle music)

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