Modern Dining Table - Traditional Joinery

Where do I even begin honestly? A couple of months back, thinking I was going to be done doing commissions for a while, my old roommate from law school reached out to have me make a dining table for him. He was pretty enamored with the timber frame barn door and the Nakashima table, and since he and his wife recently moved into a new house, he essentially demanded to have some of my work in his house.

Honestly, I was humbled, thrilled, but already damn exhausted from some other things I’ve been working on before I head back to my re-opened office June 1st. I agreed and this creation is what I came up with. Initially the idea was to do a Japanese style dovetail, which is set up a bit differently than a western dovetail, and have that draw bored with a square peg. However, two things happened during the process. For starters, I wanted to use a larger version of the square hole drilling chisel that I used on the timber frame barn door and Lee Valley tools is backordered till god knows when. Secondly, I forgot what the Japanese dovetail looked like and just started cutting away and next thing I know, I cut a western dovetail. That led me to doing a standard draw bore, which if you follow along, you’ve seen me do a thousand times. However, what makes this one interesting is the angle of the joint. the joint splays upward at ten degrees, which means that to keep the inside angle of the joint tight, the elbow if you will, it needs to draw in toward that elbow, essentially drawing tighter in two directions.

The top was inspired by the timber frame barn door, and while I wanted to use the white wax from the Real Milk Paint Company again, I opted for Rubio Super White to create a water resistant surface that can be touched up from time to time. The white color still highlights the grain, but was a design choice from the client to match their home decor. The rich tones from the Spanish Cedar create an awesome contrast to that.

Overall, this build used just under $1000 in material. I opted for S4S Ash which was $4.20/bf + $150 milling charge. The Spanish Cedar I bought a pack of on a deal so I probably used about $100 worth of it. The Rubio was about $60 and I still have enough for a small project if I'm so inclined. The final dimensions of this table are 8' x 4' x 1.5" for the top and the base is 69" long at the stretcher and 28" high. It's a beast.

Here's some of what I learned a long the way...

Help support my work through the following affiliate links, all products utilized in the making of this project:

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If you're unfamiliar with my work or my channel, you may just be like, "Hey guy... buy a jointer." I do not own a jointer. I would love one, but I just don't have the space. Therefore, if I'm not paying someone to joint stuff for me with booze and steaks, I'm doing it myself and I usually have to get creative. Here, I opted to cut my glued up stock to rough size and then brad nail a piece of plywood with a straight edge on it. That was used against a tall face which then gave me one mostly straight clean face. I then used a jointer plane to clean that up and then flattened the adjacent face with a jack plane. Boom. Much like using a jointer, I've got a flat edge and face square to each other, so I can flip it, run it through the thickness planer, and then trim the last edge off back on the table saw. It's gritty, it's not something I'm thrilled about. But it works.

I'm not going to spend a ton of time talking about how to cut dovetails. I have an entire YouTube video on that, an Instructables article, etc. What I will tell you are the keys to cutting this particular angled dovetail.

The dovetail sits at the bottom of the leg assembly. It splays upward at 10 degrees. If you're going to be cutting this on your table saw, you'll want to set it at 80 degrees to accommodate for the 10 (90-10). Then, really it's using your marking gauge to reference the thickness of your pin board to your tail board. The tricky thing with the angle will be on your faces as a marking gauge is a bit clumsy there since there's reference surface is angled. I like to do the two edges first, then use a square and a marking knife to mark the faces and connect the two lines from each edge. This takes a little practice but once you get the hang of it it'll make sense. A good tip here is to drop the point of your marking knife into the corner between the unmarked face and the line, and then slide the square up to it. That'll typically give you a pretty accurate reference.

Cutting is self explanatory. Mark your waste and don't cut things that aren't waste. If you're not confident with your sawing, stay away from the lines and pare or file down. I like to use a little baby rabbet on the insides of my tails to help them sit better and cover up any flaws in the inside corner (the elbow in this case). I also chamfer the corners of the tails on that side as well. It helps with fitting.

After you mark your pins, you're going to end up with a pretty hefty chunk of waste to cut out. I like to go with multiple relief cuts. If this stock was any thicker I wouldn't have gone with the fret saw, and instead would have just whacked it out with a mortise chisel. But because of the way I did the relief cuts, I was able to nibble off tiny bits of waste to not kill my blade through the process. I use a ten degree jig from scrap to give me a fence to chisel against to refine to my line, and then voila. You've got an angled dovetail.

An angled draw bore isn't much different from a regular draw bore. The concept is: offset holes. Your hole on the tenon on a standard draw bore is offset about 1 mm toward the shoulder which sucks the joint tighter together. In this instance, you could settle for that, but I want to make sure that the vertical or ten degree angled member, and the base member, are being drawn together to meet at the elbow of the joint.

Here, I essentially found the center of my mortise from the outside by drawing an X on the outside of the pin board, using the base line and the end of the board as the parameters. You'll use a drill press or hand drill to drill that out. Then, assemble the joint, and use your same brad point bit to mark on your dovetail tenon. Then you'll move 1 mm toward the elbow of the joint, mark again, and drill that hole. Reassemble and drive your dowel in.

I tried something a little spicy here as far as setting the dowel. I don't know how repeatable this is considering I only did it twice. However, I actually waxed the sides of my dowel with paraffin and then chucked it up in the drill and drilled it to get past the offset. You'll sort of feel the drill stop once it gets over the hump because the dowel isn't going to want to spin after being bent. So once you get to that point you can knock it home the rest of the way with a mallet. Then saw and pare your excess dowel.

A proud angled bridle joint is a bridle joint that sticks its chest out and says, "Hey... look at me". In all seriousness, I did this bridle joint in this way for a couple reasons. Number one, it looks cool. Number two, cutting down the tenon of the bridle joint to be about an inch makes cutting the mortise easy and I didn't feel like mucking around after all the labor that went into the dovetail.

A great trick I picked up from Christopher Schwarz's books is to use a chisel as an exact reference. So I actually used my one inch bench chisel to reference for creating the tenon. Then sawing that by hand, I do as I usually do: get close to the line, pare to the line. I wanted to create a little visual texture so I did an ever so slight chamfer on all the edges of the tenon.

For the mortise, it's the same concept as before: mark your waste, cut relief cuts, fret saw, and then chisel to the line. I actually used the same fence block as before to be able to pare exactly to my baseline for a flawless fit. Then it only takes a little glue to tap everything together and some light clamp work ensure that everything is set.

The stretcher that joins the two separate leg assemblies together runs along the bottom and incorporates what I can only call a third lap. Basically the stretcher will cap off the top of the bottom of the leg assemblies. That may seem confusing but it really isn't.

Each leg assembly is divided into thirds by thickness and the top third is removed. The remainder is the depth of the mortise for the stretcher. I also did a very slight rabbet on each leg assembly just to ensure a visually flawless look when the joint is assembled. These joints were so tight in fact I had to use clamps to bring it together and let me tell you, pulling them apart a couple of times was a fun experience.

The ends of the stretcher are also cut at ten degrees but angling downwards to complement the legs.

To create a bit of visual contrast, I wanted to add a bevel to the middle of the upward portions of the legs, as well as the end and middle of the stretcher. This bevel is purely aesthetic and just creates a nice change in angle and reflects the light in an interesting way that is far more unique than just a squared beam base. Once that's done, the base can be assembled, which requires glue in the lap joints to lock them in forever.

To attach the base to the table top, I'll use figure eight fasteners. I went with figure eights because they could be extremely low profile and barely noticeable. Also, they can be attached using threaded inserts which will make for a cleaner more professional assembly process for the client when the table reaches them on the other side of the country.

For finish, I'm going with the Real Milk Paint Company's Wood Wax which is a blend of walnut oil and carnauba wax. I've been working with RMPC products for quite a while now and while this product is new, it's something I certainly trust and believe in. Walnut oil is a polymerizing oil so it will in fact cure into the product. A table base doesn't need the same protection as the top, so this is an ideal finish with a great tactile feel. Just wipe on, let set for about twenty minutes or so, and then wipe off the extra. I went back and spot checked and added more where the wood looked a little dry. Overall, it was pretty easy and it took about a week to ten days or so for a full cure.

In the interest of time, I chose to use S4S Ash. It cost me $150 for the mill time, but in my estimation it was every bit worth it. I was able to bring this home directly from the lumber yard and get to work. Since this is a huge table top 8' x 4' (a full sheet of plywood for reference), I opted to make my life easier by doing the glue up in sections. I had four boards, so I glued two together and then brought both halves together.

I use the domino for almost all panel glue ups and the process is remarkably the same. I go with a wide mortise setting on one side, and then the tight mortise setting for the side with the tenon. This helps with alignment and allows me a little wiggle room during the glue up to get things just the way I like them.

After that, I trimmed the ends and the edges at ten degrees to once again match the angle of the legs. I will say, the blade on my track saw is probably both dirty and dull, so instead of trying to go for the gusto in one shot, I did half inch passes and it did reduce burning significantly.

Dutchmen or "bow ties" as they're also called definitely have their place. But splines in small cracks and voids actually work quite well to prevent cracks and checks from worsening.

I used my domino in a bit of an unconventional way to hollow the bulk of these mortises out and then just used a chisel to square the corners up. Using some ash cut offs, I made tenons to fill these voids and peened what would be the inside end of them down, about a millimeter, to wedge in the void. Once the glue contacts it, the base expands and it creates an extremely snug fit.

Now, I'm sure a bunch of folks out there will say, "But Chris... how will a spline like that hold a crack? That's the point of the flare outs on Dutchmen." Well in my experience, the face grain to face grain connection between the spline and the base of the mortise is plenty fine to hold together small cracks. Don't do this on big cracks, and frankly, it may look a little silly on the top (you'll notice I did one on the top but I went with the grain). With the face to face connection and glue, it should prevent the crack from worsening. As for knots? I just think they're unsightly sometimes so I just got the extra practice and took care of that in the worst sections.

Now typically, I love a sheared hand planed surface. Especially on table tops. However, Rubio Monocoat can't adhere to a hand planed surface. So per the directions, I sand the entire top and bottom to 120 grit.

I'm a bit ashamed to say it but I've never used threaded inserts before. I don't necessarily have anything against them but I just never felt the need to take the extra step. It's pretty simple. There's directions on the back of the box. Drill a slightly larger hole. Add a little epoxy or in this case CA glue and use an allen key to wrench the insert into place.

And in the spirit of firsts, I've also never used Rubio Monocoat either. I have to say, it is an impressive finish as far as convenience and ease. I haven't the slightest idea how it'll hold up over time, although I haven't heard many complaints. However, the fact you can sand to a low grit and it's dry to the touch in about an hour, makes it pretty enticing. There's a lot of hype on the price but really what they say is true, a little goes a long way. The tactile feel after cure is nice and it's fully ready for use after 24-36 hours. I don't know if it would be my go to on all my projects, because of the fact that it can't adhere to a sheared surface. However, for larger scale builds like this where the curing time needs to be fast, I can't imagine many things that are better or easier.

Really the most daunting thing about this build was the sheer size of the top in comparison to my shop. The actual build itself was interesting, but relatively pedestrian. The bridle joints and lap joints are very approachable for anyone just getting into hand cut joinery and while the angled draw bored dovetail is a little bit spicier, it too is extremely approachable.

As always, thanks for checking in on what I'm making. I'm excited to see if any of you all give something like this a whirl. It can be scaled to any size. Be sure to watch the YouTube video and let me know if you have any questions in the comments.

Cheers!