I've been able to get a couple coats of finish on the base parts now. I'm going to scuff sand these coats and give one or two more before final assembly. I spent some time today tweaking the bed adjustment on the Ramco sander. The sander is 37" wide, and I've got it to within .009" or less side to side. I'd like to get it a few thousands closer, but it will do. This is wood we are working with after all. I'm happy enough with that result for now, and it is sanding very nicely. It is quiet, doesn't seem like its working hard at all, and the dust collection is fabulous. 


I proceeded to run the two slabs through several times to flush up any small deviation in the joint, and take the epoxy down flat.  Worked great. The extended infeed conveyor is really nice for big heavy boards like these. No visible end snipe at all. I'm going to switch to the 150 grit belt for a final pass or two. I forgot the camera at the shop again today, so nothing to show till tomorrow. I'm going to try to include a video of the slabs going through the sander. Very exciting for me anyway! It took 11 weeks to bring that machine from dilapidated and incapable of any work, to completely refurbished ready for another 30 years work. My thanks to Bob and Richard for their help!


As promised here's those photos.

That 15 minutes represents hours of saved orbital sanding!

I've machined the mating notches in the legs on the Felder saw. I marked the first joint, then set two stops on the crosscut fence for the two shoulders. I cut these first, then plowed out the waste in between.

Next I cleaned up the saw kerfs with a chisel and rabbet plane. 

Once I had cut all four joints, I test fit them. The addition of this second notch makes for a very clean looking joint.

I've decided to prefinish the base parts before final assembly. After a whole bunch of sanding, and one last round of epoxy in a couple spots...here is the first coat of finish on the legs. Hard to believe that log was destined for the firewood pile.

The trestle will determine the leg spacing on the base. I'm trying to minimize interference between table legs and people's legs. The outer edge of the base will be 11" in from the edge of the table top, and the trestle stretcher will be another 12" or so in from there. After playing around with two chairs and spacing the legs different distances, I've settled on 48" apart. This gave ample room for Richard and I to sit next to each other between the legs comfortably. 

Now that I've determined that critical piece of information, I lay out the stretcher for the two joints. There will be four dados cut, at the same angle as the legs are splayed. They have to be precisely in line with each other. This could have been easy, but it wasn't. One reason, the saw blade on the sliding saw tilts the wrong direction for these cuts. The other is I've only got one straight edge, the other is live. Fortunately we have a left tilt Powermatic saw. I set up an extension table for support of the long rail. I used the miter gauge to make sure the cuts would be square, tilted the blade to the correct angle and height. I set the rip fence to reference location for the two outside cuts.That ensured that they were parallel and in the same location. This required me to use the miter gauge backwards, on the far side of the wood for half of the cuts. I cut out the waste between those two cuts on the slider.

Once those notches were complete, I ran the legs through the wide belt sander to fit them to the joint. Here is the trestle and legs coming together.

I've left the stretcher horns long for now, they will get cut once I determine where it looks best. The last step of the joinery will be to machine a shallow dado on the inside edges of the leg the width of the stretcher. This will make for a clean looking joint and hide any wood movement gaps that occur throughout the year. This is illustrated below. In winter when the two legs shrink slightly in width, the two gaps you see in the center now would be visible without this second set of dados housing the stretcher. It will also allow the legs room to expand in the summer. 

And here it is all together for the first time. 

I've made quite a bit of progress on the base in the last couple days. I made the two battens that will tie the top to the base. These came from the long rip off one of the two slabs. I tapered the ends of them to minimize interference with legs, and also to hide them as much as possible.

Next I will be mortising the legs to the battens. The leg is easy, the battens will be a bit tricky. I'm going with a single tenon, 1/2" x 5" x 1 1/2" long. It will be centered on the leg, so there is ample room for expansion and contraction. This quartersawn maple should only move about 1/16" over the 10 inches. The setup on the multirouter for mortising the batten at the angle involves a wedge of the same angle. It maxes out the height on the pneumatic clamps. It worked well.

Next I drilled the battens for the fasteners that will connect the base to the top. The holes are first counter bored, and then drilled through with an oversize bit. The center two holes are standard, and the outer two will be elongated for movement.

The next step is to mill the trestle stretcher, and the joint that will house it in between the legs. Then I'll be close to assembly of the base. I've completed all epoxy work on the legs already, so once they are sanded I'll be ready to glue up!

I had a conference today with the client today about the base design. I'm on the right track with the exception of the tilt of the legs. They will stay vertical and split in the center and rotate slightly away from center. The trestle will protrude through the gap. I'm working on placement of the legs here, trying to optimize leg room for all. I really wish I could keep the extra 6" I have right now.

Here's another angle. The missing leg's getting the epoxy treatment over on the bench.

The last design element I'm considering is a slight taper on the legs. I've masked it off with tape here to get an idea of what it looks like. Try to ignore the upside down room around the table. Flipping the photo is much easier than flipping the table!

I've come in about 1.25" at the top of the legs. With the straight grain of this wood the effect is pretty subtle. I do think it adds a little something though. It may be a bit more dramatic when I attach the legs and top to the battens.
The battens will serve the function of keeping the two halves of the top co-planer and spaced the right distance. They will also facilitate bolting the top on instead of gluing to the legs. I'll be working on those tomorrow.

I have been staring at the off cuts for the base for what seems like days. I actually built a scale model today, something I rarely do. I'm glad I did though.
The concept was to continue the gap of the top slabs into the base, with the trestle intersecting in the middle. The table will be most visible from the long sides, and I think the thickness of the slabs as legs looks a bit thin from that view. I decided to try rotating them slightly, showing more than just the edge.


Here is my 10 minute model. I like the visual interest the V shape adds to the base. I do not like the trestle extending the way it does through the intersection. I think shorter will be better.

Next, I split one of the off cuts down the center. I jointed and planed the two halves and cut them to approximate length. I put them under the top and stood them in position. I found an angle that works rotating the legs. standing back looking at it full size, its pretty good...but not quite there yet. I continued to tweak their position and angle, and then leaned them over toward the saw horse. Now we are getting somewhere.

Here is vertical. Lili is not quite sure either.

Here is tilted 8 degrees.


I like that a whole lot better. I've created one of those compound angle geometry puzzles now though. The problem is when you have two rectangular planes and you tilt them from vertical and then rotate them away from each other. The distance between them at bottom stays the same, while it grows larger at the top. That's compound angle number one. In addition to the tilt away from plumb, I have to bevel those edges so they are parallel to each other while in the correct orientation. Compound angle number two is on the outside edge, where it will taper slightly toward the top while remaining parallel to the edges of the table and the gap.

Here's my first attempt at figuring it out. I'm very close. Next I've got to figure out the joint where the trestle will meet these two.

Here is another view from the end. The top still has 6" of length to lose. I'll cut that after it goes through the new sander. Still waiting on the dust collection parts to connect it.

Back to the Table

Alright, here we are back to the table project. In addition to getting the sander ready for these big slabs of wood, I've also given the wood a chance to rest a bit since ripping, jointing, planing and otherwise rearranging it. It does have a nasty habit of moving around after all that. I'm happy to report  the wood is good. Dead flat according to my 24" Starrett straight edge.

Look at the amazing color in there. I can't wait to get finish on it.


I'm starting to work on the two live edges. I want them to retain all of their shape, and their wonderful texture. At the same time, they need to be a bit more friendly to hands and clothing. I'm trying to find a balance between too rough and completely obliterating the the character that is hidden just below the bark. I'm using a combination of wire brushes, wheels, and sandpaper to work this surface. The transition between lumpy and bumpy live edge,  and smooth, flat top and bottom has to be finessed carefully as well.

Here is a relatively flat section, you can see the straight, linear quality of the edge. A big part of what I'm doing is cleaning the surface. It started out much darker than this.

Here is a more knobby section of the edge. It retains more of the pale grey/blue hue-unless I sand it too much. You can start to see how I'm blurring the transition from edge to top.




The last thing I did today was to lower the adjustable horses down to around our final height. I started playing around with the off cuts from the slabs that will become the trestle ends. As is, they are too wide and would interfere with leg room. I'm debating splitting them down the middle, making them narrower and preserving the live edges. I don't have perfect live edges on both sides since there was some chainsaw work done to the log to fit in the sawmill. The other option is making them trapezoidal as shown in the drawing. I'm leaning to the latter today. We'll see tomorrow.

The new parts have been installed, and the sander is completely re-assembled and running! It went quite well, and much easier than taking it apart. We've found a location for it in the shop that seems to work well. Several things got shuffled around, but so far we like it. In our nearly 4 years in the shop, this is the first time we've moved any machinery. The Panhans saw is in position now and wired up too. It was difficult to make that room, since the sliding table on it travels 120"+ fore and aft of the blade.




I'm worked on the bracket for the emergency stop today. I drilled and tapped two holes in the edge of the bed to bolt the old bracket on. Drilling through holes in 3/4" plate steel with a hand drill is quite a chore. I made it, no broken bits! Slow going and lots of oil. Bob welded the plate for the switch to mount on. Its now in a slightly different location than before but it works fine. New sanding belts are on the way so I'll be sanding table slabs soon!

   Tapping the first of two holes.

 Bracket for the switch welded in place with the safety stop bar installed.             This activates the brake and stops the drum and conveyor in less than 2 seconds.

Here it is all back together, wired up and in place. Its also bolted to skids that will make it easy to move...a feat the rigger that loaded it said was impossible. Took about 10 minutes once you removed the lower covers. Still need to hook up the dust collection. On the wish list for later will be a digital readout for the height, and maybe paint. It kind of clashes with the sea of green machines in the shop. Its been a rewarding project restoring this sander. I'm happy that I found American made machine, and the company is still in business with parts on the shelf. Its very simple and well built. It should be as good as new as I've replaced all the things that should affect the quality of the result it produces. And I know the thing inside and out too.


Now, back to work on that table!

Wide Belt Conveyor Part 2

I spent some time this morning cleaning up the inside of the machine. Sure was dusty and grimy in there. Looks a lot better now. I re-installed the four posts the bed travels up and down on and put the nuts back on the acme jack threads. I took the sheave out of the center of the triple belt pulley that drives the contact drum. It slid right on the shaft when it was uncoupled. I was anticipating a struggle, it was a real bear to remove. With the pulley back on, I used a lever to lift the motor so I could install the belts. Spinning the belts, I noticed the motor drive pulley didn't have enough clearance from the machine housing. I loosened the sheave and adjusted it to be more or less co planer to the upper pulley. I say more or less because the motor mount is definitely tilted. I'll have to ask Bob about that one, doesn't make sense to me just yet. Anyway, it all spins freely now, no rubbing anywhere.

I installed those conveyor belt tension adjusting screws. They are also used to track the belt. It seems we may have got carried away and slid it a bit past where it should be, so hopefully we can track it back over to the center. I re-installed the front and rear hold down rollers, and reconnected the electrical supply for the conveyor feed motor. I bolted the dust collection shroud back in place, and put the machine covers back on. It looks like the home stretch is near.

The last things will be:
1. Re-weld or fabricate a new bracket for the emergency stop bar.
2. Install the e stop.
3. Decide on location of the machine. 
4. Wire the electrical and plumb the dust collection to it.
5. Testing and adjustment.

Wide Belt Sander Conveyor Replacement

Since getting this sander set up and running is a big part of this table project, I'm going to document the process a bit here. I also could not find any information online about doing this, so maybe this will help somebody someday. This machine arrived needing some TLC. Its a great machine, but most of the "wear parts" were, let's just call them worn for simplicity sake. This involved the recovering of three rubber rollers, and the replacement of the conveyor belt that feeds the wood through the machine. The rollers are back in, along with the new bearings. The conveyor replacement is kind of big deal, as you have to remove the entire bed, which I'm guessing weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 400-500 lbs. This is usually done via forklift. I found the next best thing being on the second floor of the building where forklifts can't go.

It started out like a million bucks. I picked up the lift downstairs to facilitate lifting the conveyor belt assembly out of the sander. Including moving the sander to a more convenient working location, blocking it up and moving the lift into position-the conveyor bed was out of the machine in an hour! I was sure this was going to be a cake walk since the hardest part was done. Or so I thought.


I measured the old belt that I cut off the machine and ordered the new one the same size. We went to slide the new belt over the side of the bed closest in the photo, and it would not fit. It was close, but close doesn't cut it here. The old belt was a lace up, that is it has a joint that comes apart-so you don't have to remove this whole assembly. The new belt is better, and is seamless. It's a $600 custom made item, and has got to work. Here starts the downward spiral of the rest of the afternoon.






Here is a close up of the side of the conveyor bed assembly. The two plates on the right end that hold the emergency stop bar had to come off. They were welded in place and  stopping the belt from making it onto the roller. 

I cut them off with a grinder, and also put a 45 on the top and bottom to give more clearance. We tried the belt again and still no go. I was threading the adjuster bolts on the right side roller to move it in as far as it would go when one of them broke off. Spent the next hour drilling out the broken bolt and re-tapping the hole. With the roller pushed in to the limit of the slot, the belt still wouldn't go on further than about 6 ". Back to the grinder.

Here is what the end looked like when I was done. The opposite side was about the same as well. It worked though.




I will have to re-weld those parts back on, or make a new bolt on plate to hold the e stop bar.

Here is the belt being slid the last few inches. Its almost tight enough that the tension adjustment bolts might not need to do much.

                         Here is the machine with the bed removed. 

                                  And here is it going back in.

The next steps will be to finish cleaning up the inside, installing the monster pulley on the end of the contact drum shaft, and putting dust shroud and the covers back on. Then on to setup and adjustment.

I can just about declare victory in the epoxy battle. I learned something 
interesting too, but a bit late. After scraping the hard as glass epoxy for 
nearly an hour-aggravating my thumbs and elbows, I decided to send it through the wide belt sander. I was sure it was going to trash the belt so I put on an old one. To my surprise it worked great, and it didn't gum up the belt. When sanding this stuff with the orbital, it loads up the paper in no time. The wide belt must not generate as much heat. So, no more scraping!


Now that the flattening, planing, and filling is more or less complete, I am ready to put the two back together again. I put a couple clamps on to reassess the joint. It needs a bit of fine tuning as the ends are just a hair open. I give the edges another pass on the jointer, little stroke with the hand plane and they are good to go. Here is a shot of the second half of the table in clamps.

Now the two halves of the table are back together, filled, flat, and planed to thickness other than finish sanding. They will no longer fit through the 15" wide belt sander. Setup on the other machine is going well. Yesterday the new bearings were installed on the recovered contact drum, and it was put back in the machine. This was greatly assisted by Bob Wood's mechanical mind. Thanks Bob. Once we took the top and the doors off the machine, and removed the dust collection fitting, access was quite a bit easier and it went in pretty easily-other than being heavy. We put the new feed rollers in too, and then realized they had to come back out to remove the bed for its new belt. That is on the agenda for today. With some luck, it should be running by the end of the day. Maybe I'll post some photos of that process, should be interesting.

Not a lot to show the last few days. Lots of shots of epoxy drying. Here's my original sketch of roughly where I'm going with the design of the table.

I glued the two halves of the slab back together. I made a U shaped cradle out of some scrap plywood to protect the live edge while clamping. It cracked a lot, but it did its intended job. The two came together very nicely, quite flat! The joint is inconspicuous, so I think I'm going to proceed with doing the other slab as well. It made the flattening painless 

and dust free compared to the alternatives.

I also started the long process of filling the cracks with clear epoxy. This will take a while. Since these two slabs were next to the pith (center) of the tree, there is quite a bit of cracking. The cracks are mostly superficial, the wood is still structurally sound. The epoxy will stabilize and reinforce the area, as well as give a flat, void free surface. The epoxy is clear, so you will be able to see into the cracks some. Its an interesting effect. 


I started with the underside, mixing in some sawdust to make a thick paste. When that was dry, I flipped it back over. I've now created a dam that prevents all the clear stuff from going straight through and ending up on the floor. It will take several applications of the epoxy on some of the cracks to fill it level.

Here is what I've been looking at for the last four days. It just keeps soaking up more and more. The stuff takes forever to dry too. Each time I think it will be the last application-the surface of the crack is pooled with epoxy. I come back the next morning to find it is low once again.

Here is part of the reason that happens...the dam on the underside may look complete-but the stuff finds its way through any little void. 


Four days after I started the epoxy project, I think I'm done. We'll see tomorrow I guess.


Next I will be reassembling and setting up the new widebelt sander. The addition of that machine is going to make this table and so many other projects easier and faster.

This half was not as cracked as the other, and the filling here is done. Here's my cabinet scraper complete with thermal and moral support. The epoxy is first scraped flat, and then sanded. I have blisters on my thumbs already just thinking about it! Then it will go through the sander to remove planer marks before final hand sanding.

I had a good day in the shop today. I've been looking forward to working with these planks for quite some time. Here is where I'm starting from. Doesn't look like much other than big, right? It gets better. 

After getting these out from their resting place, trying not to get squashed in the process, I started the process of choosing what would be the top side. I also had to decide where I would crosscut them. I'm shooting for 90" long by 46" wide. After wrestling with them for a while, flipping, turning, flipping again-I came up with a plan.

I'm going to cut off 3 feet from the end of both slabs. The off cuts will become the two ends of the base. I marked it out, and got out the old jigsaw to make a quick rough cut. I'm leaving myself 6 inches extra for now. 

I somehow got that Cat Stevens song "The First Cut is the Deepest" stuck in my head while I was doing this.

Its always hard to make the first one.

Next, I will be making a rip cut the full length of both slabs. This will make each slab about 23" wide, 46" total. I'll be cutting about 5" off the non live edge side. This will be done with the Festool track saw. As in timber framing, with boards this large its easier to bring the tool to the wood than the wood to the tool. These slabs will be a lot easier to handle real soon.

The rip from one of the slabs will become the trestle that connects the two ends of the base...I hope. There was a surprise inside of these slabs. What's a farm tree without a little barbed wire fencing? Here's the collection of steel that I pulled out-before hitting it with that saw of course. That staple is about 1 1/2" long and was completely buried. Only the braided wire was visible, and the lovely blue stain the steel created. 

Now that the slabs are cut to approximate size, I've run into an obstacle I didn't anticipate. One of the pair has more cup in it than I'd hoped after trimming. If I flatten it as is, the top would end up far too thin. I made a decision to rip it down the center, and joint the edges and glue it up flat. Added bonus of doing this, I can flatten those two halves on the big jointer! It was the first time I've heard the motor on that 16" machine bog down. It sure did expose some gorgeous grain though.The one on the bottom has been jointed and planed, and the thickness has been maintained at 1 3/4". Looking better already!