Sliding Dovetail Sofa Table Bench - 333

a couple years ago I made a mahogany and ambrosia maple sofa table and today I'm making a matching bench to use the table as a quick laptop station in the house the bench frame will be made from the exact same ambrosia maple stock I used for that build and this is actually all that I have left and it turns out it's the exact amount that I need the overall style of the bench will be slightly different than that table the base will be the same design but the top it'll be a little bit more interesting the majority of the work will be done with the ambrosia maple so that's where I'll start first joining one wide face and then both adjacent narrow faces then it's over to the bandsaw to rip the blanks into about one and five-eighths of an inch square and then back to the planer to establish a one and a half inch thickness in both directions at the miter saw a fresh 90-degree end is established and then the legs are cut to the final length as I already said this material is just leftover material from the table build that means I don't really have a choice about grain direction I just have to use what's available but as it turned out on the leg blanks we're 100% perfect with matching rifts on grain all the way around I could not get any better than this even if I tried to pick out stock definitely a happy accident here what i'm doing here is marking the location for each of these sliding dovetails as well as a carpenter's triangle in the middle to instantly let me know where each individual piece belongs at a quick glance next up is the rails the only piece I had left was already planed to seven eighths of an inch thickness and it unfortunately had a little bit of bow to the board rather than chasing the bow out of the board at the jointer I decided to just skip playing it down to the final three quarters of an inch thickness and my thinking here was that I would rather have a full 3/4 inch thickness and a very slight probably unnoticeable once assembled bow on the final length pieces rather than joint and playing the bow out and be left with thinner material the board was then jointed on one long edge and the rails were ripped to a smidgen more than the final width at the table saw and when working with figured wood like this it's pretty exciting to be able to shift pieces around to get the look that you're after in this case I was able to lay out four really interesting grain on all four rails then it's back to the miter saw to cut the pieces to their final length I rip the pieces to a little bit more than the final width because I knew that the table saw would cause some burning on the maple maple and cherry are notorious for burning easily against woodworking tools but with a few passes of a hand plane all of the burn marks they're completely gone and not only are all the burn marks gone but all of the machine marks from the planer and table saw they're gone as well a smoothing plane is much much faster than sandpaper when it comes to material prep like this now of course that's assuming the wood grain is not going crazy and in multiple different directions the rail - leg joint will be a sliding dovetail and both sides of the joint will be cut using a single template the inside of the template allows the negative part of the sliding dovetail to be cut and once a test piece confirms the correct setup all eight of the negative cuts are bashed out quickly then the machine is set up to run on the outside of the template for the positive part of the sliding dovetail again a test piece is used to dial in in the perfect fit now the fit I was going for is a really tight fit that doesn't require a mallet for dry assembly when hide glue is used it will slightly lubricate the joint for assembly but due to the thickness of the glue and the already tight fit of the joint a mallet may be required and once again all eight cuts of the positive side of the joint are batched out quickly next both long rails are clamped together with the top faces touching and then placed in a vise this will allow me to easily lay out all of these slat locations on both front and back rails at the same time and the layout consists of two inch wide by one half of an inch deep cuts for these slats spaced one half of an inch apart to keep symmetry each end cut will start one quarter of an inch in from the sliding dovetails and the bottom of these end slits will be lined up with the top of the legs during assembly to make these slat cuts I'm setting up the machine to restrict the horizontal cut to two inches wide but also allow a vertical travel inside that two inch restriction now the bit can be lined up with the layout lines and a partial slack cut on the end can be made then the piece is repositioned for the first full slat cut and I found the best results were achieved by making a typical mortise cut first then backing out lifting the bit so the center was slightly higher than the top of the material plunging full depth then plunging top down to clean up the leftover material and this sequence resulted in zero tear out on both sides of the cut then it's just a matter of repositioning the material and repeating the cut [Applause] now for consistency's sake and to cancel out any error i make during lining up the bit with my pencil lines I made sure to cut one rail from left to right and the other rail from right to left this means that the cuts will be made from the same side of the bench and therefore increased precision of slat alignment this dry assembly shows the slat cuts on the front and back rails lining up with the top of the legs and it also shows how much the side rails need to be trimmed to match the top of the legs also using a metal hammer here isn't really a big deal as not only is the D maple pretty hard but both the top and bottom faces they'll be covered and I'm making sure to not hit the edges to quick cuts at the table saw and the side rails are ready for assembly one of these simplest ways of making a leg more interesting is by adding a taper there's many ways of cutting a taper but I already had a specific size taper block for the bandsaw that matched the dimensions I needed so that's the route I took and just like the last cuts at the bandsaw the tapers were cut with a smidgen more material left on the leg than the final desired amount here you can get a good look at the taper as well as the nearly perfect grain appearance on the legs back at the work bench the tapers were quickly cleaned up with a couple passes of a smoothing plane [Music] the rest of the routing will be done at the router table and with just two bits the first is a 1/8 of an inch roundover a bit for the legs followed by a 1/4 inch roundover bit for these slats and the top of the long rails the legs receive the 1/8 of an inch roundover on all long edges as well as the bottom of the leg now since getting a 1/8 of an inch roundover bit in my shop i use it on the majority of everything that I make it breaks sharp edges without giving the intentional rounded appearance meaning that the pieces can still maintain a blocky or a straight and flat appearance but still have an edge that's a little bit more inviting to the touch for the top of the long rails I installed the 1/4 of an inch roundover bit and buried the infeed side of the fence into the bit this will provide a little bit more support to the back of the cut and therefore reduce tear out now I was a little bit nervous of the step because these rounded edges were part of the design and any tear-out would be extremely noticeable and in this case nearly impossible to fix the final results were absolutely perfect though zero tear out and I was very pleased finally the frame is assembled with hide glue and just as expected the thickness of the glue and the tight fit of the joints made the use of a hammer necessary but at the same time the lubricating properties of the hide glue meant that I could take it a little bit easy with the hammer no clamps necessary just get the top edges to line up and set it aside with the frame set aside I'm milled to the mahogany slats now I'm not 100% sure that this is mahogany while building it I I thought it was a soupy Lee due to the predominant streaks in the grain but after analysing the completed project next to a coffee table that I made where I know the wood was African mahogany I honestly just don't know at the table saw I sized the pieces slightly wider than the slat cuts on the frame so that the narrow faces could be both cleaned up and the perfect fit established with the smoothing plane at the workbench back to the router table to cut the 1/4 of an inch roundover on all long edges of these slats followed by cutting these slats to their final length at the miter saw now I got these two steps backwards I should have cut to length first and then routed the edges that way the router bit would clean up the tear out caused by the dual miter saw blade that I happen to be using alright so let me just jump in really quick and talk about this design so I made a design video of designing this and Sketchup and that video is on my second channel I'll have a link in the description if you want to see this designed in Sketchup and in that particular design video or the making the design itself okay I was really excited about one specific feature and that is this exposed rail with the slats sitting down into the rail and everything being rounded in opposite directions it was a you know this is amazing kind of a design element I thought it would look really really cool once I got it built I'm just like Generic right it's okay it's not bad but it didn't have that wow factor which was a little bit disappointing sometimes that happens so I put the brakes on this was completed at this stage last I think Thursday today is Monday when I'm recording this so I put the brakes on let it sit over the weekend kinda and see if I can think of something to make it more interesting my solution which my solution is to recut the slats out of some more material that are a full inch longer than what these are that will allow me to create an outside curve on both sides of this bench then with them sitting down in place and not secured everything exactly where it needs to be take a piece of 3/4 inch plywood with that exact same radius on both sides and some double-stick tape and sit it set it down on top of all of these so that I could lift them all up and then remain in their orientation their final orientation flip that piece of plywood over and put some scrap material over the top of this perpendicular to these gaps and screw through the gaps into the plywood basically creating some hold downs to really securely hold these in their exact final orientation then at that point I guess cut the curve on these pieces and then take the piece of plywood with everything screwed down to the router table and cut a taper on the on the cut edge so it'll be a curve as well as a taper and the way I was going to accomplish that was instead of tilting the router I was gonna tilt the table by simply putting a shim or a spacer on one side of the table sticking down to it and then that plywood would rest against the bearing on the bit and on top of this piece of plywood elevating it kind of tilting it a little bit that flush trim bit would then create a slight taper to the bottom edge of this curve that sounds like a that sounds like an appropriate process to accomplish that but before I did that I've actually modeled what I was thinking and Sketchup and it just doesn't fit it just doesn't look right it looks too out of place compared to the base so with all of that said I think I'm just gonna stick to the original design sometimes things aren't as spectacular as they may originally appear but they're still pretty good this to me just looks like an outdoor table with slats for rain to fall through that's fine I'm gonna use it inside as a bench to use my laptop at a sofa table that I built previously and it looks pretty good it just doesn't look as amazing as I thought it would so I figured I'd throw that out there and this will look a heck of a lot better with more contrast once the finish is applied it to the whole piece this mahogany will really darken up I actually I think it's soupy Lee it'll really darken up and I still have to put the little decorative strips down here so that's it I'm going to knock this out with a quick the last piece is needed before assembly are the 1/8 of an inch strips that will be glued to the bottom of all of the rails and this is one of the many reasons why I think a 2 by 6 push stick is the best all-around option at the table saw the sacrificial flat bottom of 2x6 provides stability and holds down the material on both sides of the blade while allowing the blade to cut right through the push stick the sacrificial hardwood cleat on the back edge of the block provides a mechanical connection to prevent slipping of the push stick over the workpiece as it's being cut and you can easily cut strips 1/16 of an inch or less between the blade and the fence safely and easily pick up yours today for free at your nearest scrap bin the glue that I'm using for the rest of the project is a quick setting glue that dries clear to reduce squeeze out on the outside I'm only applying a small bead of glue close to the inside edge finally these slats can be installed and the same glue technique is used just a little bit of glue near the inside edge and this is a long grain to long grain glue connection so it should be plenty strong as is and in my initial Sketchup design I planned on using screws to attach the slats but decided against it mainly for looks I think not using screws will look a lot cleaner and I honestly don't think they're needed for strength and of course if by chance the glue only strategy just doesn't work out long term I can always drill and add screws later the final step before finish was to do a once-over with a fine grit sandpaper just to take care of any problem areas and for a finish I'm just springg shellac nothing fancy I ended up spraying two coats of seal coat shellac and literally that's it it's plenty enough protection for the way it will be used and it still feels like you're actually touching wood instead of a plastic feel that polyurethane can sometimes give now the secret sauce here or the main takeaway here was that cleaning up all the phases as I went with either sandpaper or a smoothing plane made this finishing process extremely painless so here it is in the house and excuse the lack of cable management this is just a temporary location for the table as our Christmas tree is up in our living room but overall I think it I think it looks really good the wood combination matches perfectly and because the bench top is different it provides something else for the eyes to inspect and of course my big ol butt fits on it and I finally have something to sit on for a quick laptop session in the house also here you can see it next to the African mahogany top coffee table that I made previously so what do you think is its appeal E is it mahogany now that I look at it while editing this video I'm leaning more towards it just being mahogany and not sappy Li but then again as I was making it those streaks really are you know very characteristic of sappy Li so who knows so I think that's it for this video if you want to stay up to date with everything that I'm doing then check out my website and sign up for my email newsletter I publish a lot more on my website that I do on this particular YouTube channel if that's where you're viewing this video so yeah that is definitely it you guys take care and I'll talk to you later you