Unusual Woodworking — Woodworking How To

Hey everyone, welcome to my solid stump build. This is going to be the build of the rectangular shaped solid walnut stump I did for my recent river table. And it started out here at the sawmill where I had them rough out this walnut log that had been sitting for about seven years into the dimensions I needed. I should mention there is a bit of risk when you're building furniture out of thick logs like this because the wood may never actually get entirely dry all the way through. After I felt fairly comfortable with the moisture level of the log, I took it into Creative Woodworking in Portland. Here they have a 20 inch joiner. It was really nice to get that one edge squared up on. And then from there we went to the beam sander. I didn't even know they had a beam sander but it was really nice because it had an 18 inch capacity and this log was 14 inches in the tall side of it. You'll see here in just a second how nice of a finish this beam delivers. I was really really impressed with the quality of it. Again this isn't my shop and that is a 20 inch blade on this Martin table saw. It has an 8 inch cut capacity. Still had to make two passes though to get this log squared off. Now that I'm back in my shop I'm going to show you how I cut and inlay these bowtie joints. I will be doing a separate video with an expanded explanation of all the steps I used. But basically I built this little jig to cut the shape of the bowties out. I do have a couple different ones. This is a 7 degree one. It's kind of a more modern little bit thinner bowtie. I tend to prefer this look a little bit but I think most people actually like a little more traditional steeper angle. Here I just wanted to make sure I had a good perfectly flat surface to inlay the bowtie so it didn't go in crooked at all. The process isn't that complicated. You will get a lot better at it with practice but all I do is I use double-sided tape to stick them down so they don't move around at all and take a marking knife. You can use an exacto knife too if you prefer and just start with really light passes and make multiple light passes and what you're doing is you're giving your chisel something to rest into is all you're really doing. You can see the outline there. When you're setting your router depth I like to leave about a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch proud so that way you can plane and sand it flush instead of having it sink in too far and don't try to get too crazy close to the line. About a sixteenth of an inch is close enough. It can be hard to get your chisel in your marking knife line if you get too close with the router. This end grain I found chiseled really really easily. Much easier than the long grain and just get your chisel in that little groove you marked with your marking knife clean out the excess. From here you're ready to get a little glue on your bow ties and I try to go pretty light to get started just to make sure they're going in straight and then I'll really hammer them in. Also I like to add this walnut dust whether it looks like it needs it or not. There may or may not be tiny little gaps and this will just help fill in any of those little imperfections. You'll need this more when you're starting and as you get a little better it's less and less necessary. I just kind of do it out of habit still. There's really no wrong way to smooth these out. You could use a belt sander. I started with the four and a half plane moved over to my little block plane here which is probably my favorite one for smoothing these bow ties out. I do always like to finish with an orbital. It gives the best scratch-free finish and everything gets perfectly flush. Not every bow tie is perfect. These ones turned out really really nice though. Not really any visible gaps which is all I'm really shooting for. So the piece you've been following I actually took to Bird's View Furniture in Portland and had them spray it with a conversion varnish finish to match the top that went with it. But here's a little easier finish you could use. This is Osmo. I would use Odie's oil if I was going to do it again but it's a really simple wipe-on finish that you can get a professional finish in a dusty shop. So here's some finished studio shots of this square stump base and this was specifically requested by a client and I actually wasn't crazy about the idea when she told me this but in the end I was really really happy with how it turned out. Okay that's the whole build. If you'd like some more information on the top I put on this square stump I have an entire DIY river table build tutorial that I give step-by-step instructions on how to make that top.