voiceover:the wood whispereris brought to you by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921, and by rockler woodworking and hardware, create with confidence. (upbeat music) marc:let's move on to the cross-members. both cross-members can becut from a single board. and fortunately, this one can be milled without all the precautionsthat we had to take
in our previous milling sessions. i joint the face and one edge and then rip the board at the table saw. after a rip of this length, there is usually a littlebowing to deal with. fortunately, my boards are plenty wide, so it's back to the jointerto straighten the pieces out before trimming them to final width, thickness,
and length. now i've got my cross-membersmilled up and ready to go. the thing that we need to do at this point is add the mortises on the endfor the domino construction. the way you do that, very easy. we already have our lines on our template. i just need to transfer those lines to the ends of the workpiece. as long as my lines are roughly centered,
you could certainly movethem one way or the other if you wanted to, but i think centered will look the best. just transfer those lines down. now i just want to extend those lines. now we're ready for the dominoes. now my next step is toadd a nice heavy roundover to each one of the edges, and that will give it justmore of a sculpted smooth look
that goes with the rest of the piece. now the cross-members are going to need a little bit of work. i've got a ridge here from the router bit. i've got a little bit ofextra material at the ends that i just wasn'tquite comfortable enough to go right to the very end. a block plane and some sandingshould take care of them. now this is not a huge deal,
but i did want to show it to you. there is a little trace of a knot there, and i want to make sure that i fill that. i'll probably have thispart facing the bottom so you never really see it. but still, i like to fill it if i can. i'll just get a little bit of ca glue. a spritz of quick-set activator. here you go.
now that we have mostof the parts done here, there is no reason why wecan't do a dry assembly and just get an idea of, just to make sure everything looks the way it's supposed to look, it's cut to the length thatit's supposed to be cut. this is the time when you'regoing to see something like maybe a rail is too thick. maybe it's too thin and youneed to make another one.
the curves in my legs still need work. i already knew that, but it's something that becomes a little bit more painfullyobvious at this stage when i take a look at it in this form. but for the most part, i got to say, i'm pretty happy with the proportions. i like where my rails are,
and i think we're just goingto proceed at this point. i'm going to disassemble everything. i'm going to take theselegs back to the bench, sit in my stool, throw on some music, relax a little bit, and just sand the rest of the day away because it's ... and you really want totake your time with it.
you don't want to rushthat part of the process. you'll be rewarded with amuch more fluid smooth look when it's all said and done. this leg here has prettymuch got all the sanding it's going to get at this point. you could really see what i'm going for is just absolute smooth transitions. all those roundovers,for most of our work, that's usually enough.
if we're looking for agood rounded-over look, just hit it with a little bitof sandpaper and you're done. this is a little bit different. we don't want to seeany transition at all. from, what was it, like a3/4 or one-inch roundover to the flat surface, we want to make sure that it'sabsolutely smooth and soft all the way through. what i usually wind up doing,
i'll hit the flat surfaceswith my random orbit sander, but at this point, i don'tusually go beyond that. the random orbit sander, especially on these tight curves, can create a lot of divots and things, so resist the urge to do that. you got to do it the slow way. go by hand. fold over a sheet of 180-grit sandpaper.
you're just going to go through and hit all of those edges, smooth it out. then what i recommend doing is once you're at the pointthat you think you're done, turn it around. look at it from variousdifferent directions. look at it under different lights. a lot of times, the way the shadow is cast
will reveal problems. so if you're on a particularspot and you don't move, you'll only see that oneparticular shadow line. so it's really important to take this, maybe even take it in the house and look at it under a different lighting and see if you could figure out what ways will make it look that much better. but like i said, i'mpretty much at the point
that i think i'm good with this. now, i do want to mention one thing. you've got an issue here where we have long vertical grain andthen horizontal grain. it's a cross-grain situation. that can bring up someproblems with sanding because as you're sandingthe vertical piece, it's only natural thatyou're going to wind up hitting that horizontal piece,
and we do need this transitionto be perfectly smooth. let me show you upclose how i handle that. i usually start by sandingthis vertical piece and my fingers on the bottom. i lift them up a little bit because i don't really want toput a whole lot of pressure. i do want to make contact. i just don't want to bereal aggressive down there. most of the aggressive sanding
is being done with my top two fingers. same thing when you'rerounding over these edges. you have to cross the transition line in order for it to be smooth. ok. once i'm at the point that ithink that i've sanded enough, then i'll come back and i'll sand with the grain of the bottom piece right at my border line.
a couple of passes like this typically, especially at 180, 220 grit, it's really all you need tocancel out the vertical lines we may have just put in there. and around the corners here, just wrap the corner. roll it around the corner like this. that should do the trick. now, another thing,
you will probably start wondering what you're going to doabout all this end grain. as this curve slopes upwards, we expose end grain right in this area. as we know, end grain is a lot harder to sandthan a regular face grain. so what do you do here? unfortunately, it's just elbow grease. again, don't be tempted to use
something like a power sander because you will divot this beyond repair. you want to make surethat you take your time and try to get rid of asmuch of the white marks as possible. on a piece like this, this is going to test your patience. i recommend doing as much as you can until you can't stand no more.
once you're at that point, go ahead and hit it witha little bit of water. i'll show you what happens. this is actually very forgiving. i've sanded it enoughthat once finish goes on, it's going to look pretty darn flawless. i wouldn't worry about it too much. you definitely want to haveit sanded consistently, and any major scratchesneed to be removed.
but if it's not absolutely dead on, 100% perfect, it probably isn't goingto matter all that much, as you could see, and just test it with water. a little bit of water won't hurt anything, raise the grain a little bit, but it will show you ifyou have any problem areas. (whimsical music)
hey tim, it's marc. (faint male voice on phone) marc spagnuolo. marc spagnuolo from the wood whisperer. t-h-e ok, you got it? look, i need a roundover bit fast. i need one right now. no, i've already got those.
i got regular roundover bits. this is a special roundover bit. it's different than the other ones. you know the little thing that goes with the little floop thing? yeah, i need ... no, i need one of those now. right now. (whoosh)
thanks, tim! eagle america, fast shipping. what i ordered was a tabletop edge bit. the idea is it's sort of anextended thumbnail profile where it's not so sharp of a downturn. here's a regular roundoverbit of a comparable size, and you could see howdramatically different that curvature is between these two bits. to me, this is much more pleasing
for a really thick tabletop. this starts to look a little, i don't know, commercial to me if it's got a big old bullnose roundover like this. something like this is alittle bit more elegant. it thins out the top a littlebit without going too far and gives you a nice soft curve that you could put your wrists up against,
which is perfect for a desk. (whirring) i took a close look at theroundover that we created here, and i really like whatit does to the surface, so it got me to thinking, is there anywhere else thati've already done a roundover that i might be able to usethat bit to improve on it? let me show you what i didwith the cross-members here. you could see this top piece has had
the additional rounding done that created this extra edge here, and the bottom is the old version. you could see essentially what i'm doing is removing some ofthis material right here to help soften thatcurve a little bit more, which is what this is all about. it's not perfect. it's going to need a little bit of sanding
to further smooth this, but you could see it just makes a nice more flowing curve that i think is just a better look. it matches the look of the piece when compared to the original, just with a standard roundover. now although i'm not too worried about cable managementand things like that
with this particular project, i do want to make surethat the cords and things that have to go back downfrom the top of the table down to the pc will have a place to go because i really do want this thing to be right up against the wall. so i need to have some areasin the back of the table that will allow those cords to go through.
this plexiglas templatethat i got from rockler has come in handy so many times for various different things. having perfect circles and these elongated circles like this just comes in really handy for projects, so i do recommend pickingsomething like this up. you could see what i've done here is set this one up just at the point
that i'm giving myself maybe a four, four and a half inch area where the cords are goingto be able to go through. i've got a double sticktape to the surface. i've got my pattern bit ready to go. i'm just going to take a few passes to slowly remove the material until i get my bearing upagainst the plexiglas template. now i'm going to start thinking about
how we're going to attach the top to our leg assemblies here. because this is a big fat solid top, it's going to move overthe course of the seasons. in arizona, i don't reallyhave that much movement to be concerned about, but there still is some, so we need to make surethat whatever we do allows this table to expand and contract.
the easiest way that i know to do that is to have some countersunk holes and a screw that's able to move a little bit forward and back. and a cumulative effect of three screws moving forward and back is to give it about ahalf inch, even more, depending on how muchof a slot you create, to allow it to expand and contract
and just move around. let me show you how i make it. most of the work is going to be done in the top of the leg assembly here. i'm just going to use a countersink bit to put two holes here in thelong part of the top assembly. and we'll have one in the back. now this bit is going to allow me to punch all the way through,
and it's sized so it's a littlebit bigger than my screw. now once i know i'm all the way through, and mind you, this is a quickand dirty way of doing it, but it does work just fine, i'm going to sort of anglemy bit back and forth to widen that slot. the one thing i'm being very careful of is to make sure thatmy bit doesn't contact this outside rim of the countersink.
because if i do, i'm going to wind up ruiningthe integrity of that, and we need that to be a perfect circle. you'll see why in a bit. now with the piece flipped over, i'm essentially going to do thesame thing from the top end, just being careful not to go too far. you can see i'm creatingan elongated slot. now the end result should be a slot
that allows the screw to movequite a bit back and forth. now of course, these holesdon't look very good, so we're going to need to plug them up. the best way to do thatis to make your own plugs using the same exact species of wood. i'm going to show you how i make that. what i've got here is calleda tapered plug cutter. it's something that youreally only want to use with a drill press,
and it's going to create a slightly tapered plugthat's going to be perfect, so you have to use the material that you made your project out of, and you can make thesecustom plugs for anything. let's go ahead and ... well, we got to make six of them. (pop) i've got this guy clampedin place here, so ...
i got to adjust the clampeach and every time, but it's better to be safe than sorry. now a quick cut at the bandsawwill release the plugs. a little bit of glue, acouple of taps with a mallet, and that will sit in there perfectly. just make sure you align thegrain and you should be fine. before i start to do any sortof assembly on this piece, i want to make sure that i get some finish on this surface.
this way, i could screw it to the top, flip everything over, and start doing the finalprocessing of the whole piece and keep these legs attached. the bottom already has finish, so why not have this surface with a couple coats of finish on it? nothing tricky. it doesn't have to be super neat.
i just want to make sureit's nice and sealed up. before we attach the legs to the top, we need to connect the cross-members and glue them in place. we've got all of ourdominoes here ready to go. i've got some epoxy, which is my glue ofchoice on this project, and it gives me a lot of working time. i'm just going to take some of this epoxy
and carefully put it into the mortises. i don't want to be too messy here because this will get epoxy on the leg, and it's going to be visible later, so i want to be a little bit careful about how i apply it. you want a good wet coatinside of those mortises. of course, we need to get epoxy inside the mortise on the cross-member.
paint some epoxy on the domino itself. ok, now push against that side for me. so what do you do if youdon't have clamps this long? well, you could always joina couple of clamps together and have them link up. that's one option. for long clamps, there really is no cheaper solution than a good old pipe clamp.
that is looking pretty good. let that dry for a few hours. now while the base glue-up is drying, it's a good time toattach it to the tabletop. everything is here. why not? i got to start bypre-drilling a little bit of a pilot hole for the screw. now i've just added a clamp here
to hold everything in place for me. i don't have to worryabout it moving around. a little bit of lubricationfor our screw here. and i will attach it by hand. i like doing this by hand when i go into a solid wood top because it just gives me a feel for if i'm going into a dangerous area that could crack the top.
if you use something with power, you tend to lose controla little bit easier, and you might go too farand you could crack it. by hand, at least you knowwhen things are really starting to tighten up. now we can plug these guys up. i got my plugs ready to go. i just need a little bit of glue in the hole there,
some glue on the plug itself, and tap it as far as it will go. since it's structural, it's just for surface appearance so you don't really needto tap that in any further than it wants to go. once the glue is dry on the plugs, i just use a flush trim saw. just a little bit ofsanding to clean it up.
not bad at all. now the epoxy has dried for a few hours, and i feel pretty confident. clamps are removed. i don't think we're goingto have any problems at this point. the last thing that i want to do is just do some finalfinessing of the curves using an abrasive pad.
this is the lowest grit that i could find. it's 500, so that's still pretty high, but what i like is the factthat it's really padded and i can go around all these edges and really soften them up nicely. the 500 grit, i'm not reallytrying to sand the grain to 500 necessarily. i just want something that cushions the pressure of my fingers
and helps me round over those corners. we're just putting a clear finish on this. the fact that i'm sanding it to 500, normally, you guys knowi usually stop at 180, but in this case, the effect that i get by blending very softlyusing something like this is really good, so i break my own rule of sanding to a really high grit
on this particular type of project. i've already done that. i've gone through, lookedat all the critical parts that i thought needed alittle bit of touch-up. at this point, i am so anxiousto flip this thing over and see what it looks like because i actually haven'tseen it together yet. but the problem is when am i going to have another opportunity ...
first of all, it takes a lot of effortto get nicole in here to help me flip this (laughs) and i really don't wantto have her help me get it back on the table, so i'm resisting temptation. i'm going to start tofinish the base as it is now because when am i going tohave complete open access to the base like this after this point?
if i flip it and put it on the ground, the top is going to create a huge shadow, and it's actually goingto be more difficult to finish, especially since i've gotan area of unfinished wood next to an area that'salready got finish on it. i'm just going to hold out. unfortunately, i have to leavetown for a couple of days. i'm going to woodworking in america,
and i'll be gone for three or four days, so mentally ... i mean i'm glad i'mgoing to the conference. i just mentally don't like the idea of separating from this project at such a crucial moment right before what i wouldconsider the big reveal. i'm just going to suck itup and finish it anyway. let me grab my polyurethaneand we'll get started.
basically, this is my standardwiping varnish procedure. if you don't already know about it, i do have a dvd on this topic called "a simple varnish finish." the idea is to just giveyou every possible detail you could need to successfully createa good varnish finish every single time using the wiping method. (rhythmic funky music)
seems like it should besimple and straightforward, and in some regards, it is, but there are detailsthat you need to know to be successful at this. once you know them, it's fairly easy, but you need somebody to give you a few tips and tricks here and there. that's what that dvd is all about. you can get that on thewood whisperer store.
on this side, this willbe a little bit messy, but you just got toget the finish on there and do what you got to do, trying to stay as clean as possible. but to get down on that corner there, got to get it messy. come back with a clean cloth. just wipe off that excess. now as you can see,
the table is flippedover and on the ground and the right orientation. it wasn't that difficult. it just took me, nicole,and about 15 curse words coming out of nicole's mouth to get it on the floor. but this was definitely atwo-person job to move this thing. now, i didn't show you all of the steps for finishing the base
because it's going to be repetitive. it's a lot easier, especially on camera, to show how i finished this top. but just know that putabout four coats of finish on the base. the base itself isn't going to get a whole lot of wear and tear, so four coats of a wipingvarnish is pretty good. i may go with a little bit more on the top
because that's where our arms, hands, cups, plates, things like that are going to touch this surface. it's going to get worn, so it's good to have a nicedurable thick-film finish. of course, this processstarts very similar to what we did with the base. i'm going to start standing with 80 grit. i like to mark it up with my pencil.
we'll progress from 80 to 120 and finally to 180, and we could start applying our finish. now my rounded edges i'm going to start by sanding with 180. the router bit left anice clean edge here, so it just needs a little bit of touch-up. on the curves on the end here, i'm actually going to tryand sand with the grain
with the 180. because the end grain likes to darken up when it absorbs finish, i'm going to hit it with a 220 as well. sanding to a finer grit willhelp even out that absorption, at least to some extent. (melodic music) now with well over a hundred videos here at the wood whisperer,
i sometimes take it for granted that some of these basic safety things have been covered, and i assume that you've seen some of the earlier episodes where we've covered thingslike dust collection safety. sanding a tabletop like this is going to take some time. even though i'm usinga really high quality
dust extraction system with my sander, i'm still going to protect myself. i'm going to use a 3m respirator. this is, i believe it's a 3m 7500. i've got it outfitted with some nice lightweight filters here. i mean they're goofy-lookingbecause they're pink, but since when have i beenafraid of looking goofy? it's the 3m 7500.
in fact, mine is the large size, 7503, because i've got a big mouth. the thing that i like about this is it seals really wellright around your face as opposed to some of the standard construction dust masksthat you've seen folks wear. they make better ones than the cheap, the ones that start to irritateyour face really quickly. they do have higher quality level ones,
but they're nothing likea good quality respirator. i'm out here almost everyday for hours at a time. i want to be doing thisthing when i'm an old man and just crawling in here with my coffee at 80 years old. i want to still be doing this stuff and be able to breathe at that time. with that much exposure, it's not overkill, asfar as i'm concerned,
to wear this every day. you watch my live shopcamera on the website. any given time you watch it, most likely, i'm going to be wearing this goofy pink respirator (laughs). i do recommend you have agood dust extraction system. even though you have that, that doesn't mean thateverything is completely safe. it's still going to letsome dust into the air,
and there's lots ofdust on all these tools. every time i move around andi shift the air in the room, i kick some of that dust into the air, so it's always a goodidea to protect yourself. now let's talk about thefinish for the tabletop and some of the things youmay need to be concerned with. first is the pore structure. mahogany has open pores, so depending on the final look
that you want for your piece, you may or may not have to do a pore fill. now for me personally, this isn't the type of project that i would really worry about that with. i'm not going with areally high-gloss surface, which is one case where youwould want to do a pore fill. when you're doing high gloss, any interruption in thesurface's continuity
will ruin the look. a high-gloss surface on an open-pored wood looks very weird. if you've ever seen it, youknow what i'm talking about, but you could see thoselittle pits in the surface, and it just looks odd. that would be one case. the other thing is if youare just trying to build a thick-film finish
and you know this is a surface that's going to getcleaned a lot, let's say, i know i've had shelvesthat i've made out of oak that were not pore-filled, and then over the years, as you dust them, the dust seems to get packed into the open crevices, lines,and pores in the surface. it would have been a niceidea to have those filled
and then hit with a film finish so that when you dust them, it just slides right off, and the dust actually comes off the shelf and not embedded into those cracks. now although i'm not going todo a pore fill on my table, i do want to show you some ofthe materials that i would use if that's something i was going to do. first of all, i like using, when possible,
an oil-based filler because you get more working time. on a surface like this, you kind of need that, right? what i have here isbartley's paste wood filler. it just is neutral-colored that it actually looks alittle bit like latex paint. the idea is with this neutral color, you can add dyes to get it tobe whatever color you want.
what i've got here is a dark mission brown and a transtint red. because it's mahogany and because i know it's eventually going to get to a deep red color, it's probably not a bad idea for me to go for a reddish-tinted brown filler that will look rather natural for this. now here's the thing,
we're putting color in there, right? so if we apply that to the raw wood, what's going to happen? it's going to stainthe background as well. depending on whether ornot you want that to happen will tell you whether ornot you should seal the wood prior to adding the filler. if you seal the wood, we would use a dewaxedshellac over the surface.
that seals off all the fibers. then you could put your filler on top, scrape the excess away, and sand it back down. now you're not going to sand down really to bare wood. you're trying to just sandback to that shellac layer. what winds up happening is all the color stays on the surface.
it doesn't absorb into the wood. when you sand it back, all you have left is thefiller with the color inside the pores and the background of the wood, the main surface of the wood, still looks raw. it still looks pretty plain, and then you could topcoat it with your finish.
like i said, i'm not going to use this method, but i wanted to make sure you were aware that this is what i considerone of the best ways to do a pore fill. another thing we needto talk about is color. now if you tell someoneyou're building them a mahogany table, the average person isgoing to expect the table
that is a dark deep reddishburgundy color, right? it's just what we knowof as mahogany furniture. the thing is raw mahogany, freshly finished mahogany, looks like this. it's like a salmon-y light brown color and nothing like whatsomeone might expect. if you're doing this for someone else, you may have no choice butto use a dye or a stain
and accelerate the color change and bring it to that darkbeautiful red burgundy color. this is for me, and i know what mother nature is going to do to this table. i'm in no rush to see it get there. it will get there when it gets there. i'm not too worried about it. in fact, let me showyou what mother nature
does to mahogany. this is a david marks bar stool that i made years ago. it's made out of mahogany. it's actually a mixturebecause i didn't really know what i was doing at the time, so it's a mixture of honduranand african mahogany, but the top is primarilyhonduran mahogany. look at that color difference.
no stain, no dye, mothernature, that's all. with a couple years of uv and oxidizing and just whatever it takes tomake this color shift occur, boom, look at that. i'm patient. i'll let this happen naturally. you also notice that ifthere is a little bit of color variation, which i do have in my base,
i'll show that to you later, but because we use piecesfrom different boards, sometimes one's a littlelighter than the other, that tends to even out over time. if you're patient and you're more of, i guess i might call myselfsomewhat of a naturalist. i don't really like to use stain if i could avoid it. i want to see knots.
i want to see imperfections. i want it to look like wood. i mean honestly, if i didn't want it to look like wood, i would have built this thingout of plastic or metal, or i would have just gone towalmart and bought a desk. i'm making it out of wood. i want it to look like wood, and i want to celebrate the beauty
that nature provides us with, and part of that beauty is imperfections. you'll notice i do havesome stuff on the surface that someone else might avoid. personal preference iswhat it comes down to. now the finish strategyi'm going to use here is going to be very similarto what i cover in my dvd, "a simple varnish finish," but i am going to do somethinga little bit different
at the beginning, and you can do this onjust about any project. the first coat of finishthat you apply to the surface is your sealer coat. whatever it is, whether it's varnish,lacquer, shellac, anything, that first coast is what youwould consider your sealer. if i use an oil finish asthat first sealer coat, i still have to wait four tosix hours for that coat to dry
before i can add another coat to it. what if i could usesomething as a sealer coat that dries very quickly? dewaxed shellac is perfect for that. it will dry within an hour, and then i'm on to mysecond coat of finish, which would be i'd switchto varnish at that point, and basically, i cut about six hours out of my finishing schedule.
what i have here is a onepound cut of dewaxed shellac. i'm just going to brushit on to the surface. the wood is really thirsty at this point, so it's going to suck it right in. and then within aboutan hour, it will dry, and i could lightly sandand start using my varnish on the surface. let's go ahead and startapplying the shellac. now i normally apply shellacwith a rag just for simplicity,
but in this case, i've got a lot of realestate to cover here, and i find that a brushjust allows me to move a little bit faster and cleaner as well. i keep a paper towel close by in case i get any crazy drips. with a one pound cut, it's pretty thin, so drips are going to happen. (upbeat country guitar music)
now i can start with my coats of varnish. notice i've got mycotton pad nice and thick so that it cushions your finger pressure, and i have my varnish ina secondary container. normally, i like a bit ofa wider container than this so i don't have to bend mypad to soak up the material, but it's all i have right now. i'm just going for a nice even light coat. now that first varnishcoat is completely dry,
and you should feel somebumps and sort of grit in the surface. perfectly normal. it's just the way things go. of course, we need tosand the surface down. i'm going to use 320. you could certainly go witha 400 grit or something i wouldn't go less than 320 though. we are sanding finish and not wood.
a nice sanding block likethis does a real fine job. i'm not really trying tosand away much finish. what i'm trying to do isjust smooth things out. once it's smooth to thetouch, you can move on. now to get rid of all the dustthat we put on the surface, i'm going to use a dampened rag, and it's only really dampened with water. you can use mineral spiritsfor something like this, but i just don't think it's necessary,
and if i can avoid usinga chemical, why not? water and a paper towel works just fine. just keep using a differentpart of the paper towel so you don't continue to spread this paste that you're going to create once the dust gets hit with a little bit of liquid. this rag, by the way, is damp. it's not soaked. i'm not leaving a lot ofmoisture on the surface.
it's just a dampened rag. as a bit of a precautionary measure, i'm going to use astandard paint filter here and filter some of my finish. it's just a satin arm-r-seal. (country guitar music)now that we're building coats of finish, there should be a lot less friction on the surface to deal with,
so it should go a little bit faster than that first coat did, (country guitar music) and it should spread further as well. a lot of instructions especiallyon this wiping varnish would recommend that you put a coat on, flood it on and wipe off the excess. that's so wasteful, and the reason i developed this method
of just wiping on and leaving it on is because you build a finish faster, almost like brushing, but instead of brushing, you're actually using the rag as a nice flat and smooth applicator pad. i also find that you canend up with a lot of streaks if you wind up wipingtoo much material off because you tend to have areas
where it's a little heavier than others and it gets streaky. one way to fix the streaks is to apply more finish to the surface. why not just apply agood amount of finish, build your coats faster, and be done sooner? it's a heck of a lot less wasteful. now that second coat of varnish is dry,
and it's ready for another light sanding. from hereon out, this process is pretty repetitive. depending on how thick of a film you want, you could do this forfour or five, six, seven, eight, nine coats, howevermany you want to do. i probably got abouttwo more coats on this before i call it finished, so i'm going to start sanding.
and just keep in mind, sanding between each coat, wipe the dust off, and then add another layeruntil you're satisfied with the finished build. well, folks, here it is, the trestle table in its final location. i've even got a couplecomputer components here just so you could see whatit's going to look like.
probably, i'll spend the lastpart of the afternoon here attaching maybe a power strip or something in the very back. maybe i'll just screw itinto the top of the piece. there's minimal wiring herefor these computer setups, so i'm not too worried about that, but i think what i may wind up doing is running channel material, the plastic channel stuff,
and you could just paintit the color of the wall, run that down. i've already got one therefor the internet connection, so i may as well justget a slightly wider one and put a few more cordsand things in there, and that should completely hide the wires. but at this stage in a project, you have to ask yourself, did you meet your goals?
did you meet your goalsfor the way it looks, for the functionality? let's address a few of those things. i've got the depth that i was looking for. now my monitors are further away, so it's a much morecomfortable viewing distance. looking at the base, you may think that those cross-members could cause a problem hitting your knees,
but the reality is because of that angle and because of how far the top sits out, that's not a problem at all. i am nowhere near these cross-members, so mission accomplished there. the overall shape of the thing, just the visual effect of it, is it what i was going for?
is it what i was thinking ofwhen i was first drawing this on a piece of paper? i have to say yes, absolutely. i would have liked to havedone a second prototype just to confirm this because i did take a leap of faith. after doing the firstprototype, i thought, ok, well, let's just jump right into it because i don't have enough time.
we lucked out. sometimes you can get bit in the butt when you do that type of thing, but i think i got the shapethat i was really looking for, the softness of the curve, the way everything is blended together, the relative size of the parts. for a table that's this substantial, it doesn't look that heavy to me,
you know what i mean? it's done in a way that it looks graceful. for a 92-inch long tabletop, i don't think that's very easy to do, so i think we may have a little bit of educated guesses there and maybe a little luck. the one last thing i will mention, the finish here,
i've got about four coats. i ended up with five, four or five coats of the wiping varnish. now i gave this alreadyabout four days to cure before i put anything on it. i just don't like to takeany chances with that. even still, i'm going to probablywait another week or two, and i'll come back andi'll hit the surface
with a little bit of 4,000 grit. (slow jazzy music)the 4,000 grit i have is in the shape of those little padded thingsfor a random orbit sander. i just use those by hand, and i'll wipe it down, and just get any ofthat little surface grit that might be left on the surface and smooth it out. the 4,000 grit isn't enoughto really change this sheen
because i'm already working with a satin, so 4,000 grit on this surface isn't really going to make any visual effect. it's only going to smoothit out to the touch. just wipe away any dustthat comes up from that and you'll be good to go. i hope you enjoyed this little journey into building a trestle table, not your average trestle table,
but you get the idea, and, well, i guess i'll seeyou on the next project. thanks for watching. (slow jazzy music)