Replies

1. 
   woodrae | Mar 17, 2007 07:56pm | #1

   Thanks for the book feedback, JP. (I assume you’re referring to the Workshop Idea Book.) It’s always a thrill to hear from a reader.

   As for your aquarium table, all I can say is, “Ha!” This one's easy, as we have a 55-gal. tank on such a table in our den. All told, and filled with water, fish and their fishy accoutrements, the entire assembly is one heavy sucker.

   Assuming you want to make a furniture frame and then fill it in with casework, and not a full-on case piece or cabinet, you should wrap your head around one basic furniture-building strategy: To resist lateral racking forces, which will be considerable on your table, you need to triangulate. The best approach is to aim for wide rails, with wide shoulders, and to use rails both under the top and down below, near the bottom of the legs.

   Your leg stock sounds fine, with enough thickness to house some stout joinery. And as long as you incorporate top rails (aprons) under the top and bottom rails, you should be fine, because having both triangulates the structure, preventing racking. I would use mortise-and-tenon joints, with long (1 1/2 in. or more) tenons, and keep the shoulders somewhat wide, say 2 in. at least. Perhaps the lower rails can be even wider, say 3 in. or so. Sure, you can use (sliding or lapped) dovetails at the top, but a well-fitted mortise-and-tenon will suffice and allow you to concentrate on one style of joinery during the setup and construction phase. Your choice, though. But no screws, dowels or biscuits here.

   With a 1-in. top, make sure your aprons have sufficient beam strength to prevent the top from bowing downward. At 40 in. long, the top should be pretty stiff as it is, so I would think a 2-in.-wide rail that’s about 1 in. to 1 1/4 in. thick should do it, perhaps with a cross-rail in the middle to help add stiffness. Cherry or oak is a good choice for strength here.

   One warning concerning aquarium tables. Plan on the fact that you are going to spill water onto the tabletop—no way around it. Therefore, either face the top with something impervious to water, such as a piece of glass placed over the top, some plastic laminate adhered to the top, or a really good protective finish, such as multiple coats of a polyurethane or a marine-type varnish. Here, cherry would be a better choice over oak, because its tighter grain is more likely to resist moisture over time. Some heavy, dense, and tough wood like purpleheart, greenheart or redheart--or any other hard and dense wood--would be the ultimate cat's meow. If I were using a really tough wood like purpleheart, I might give it a couple seal coats of varnish, and then leave it to age and collect all sorts of wonderful spots, or character. For a more 'delicate' wood such as cherry, I would likely apply six to eight coats of Waterlox, mostly because it’s one of my favorite finishes and I like the fact that it’s easy to renew. Just make sure the top is well sealed, and plan on touching up the finish in a few years as water and moisture do their inevitable, evil thing.

   Happy fishin’,
   Andy

   
   

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   Edited 3/17/2007 5:34 pm ET by woodrae

1. 
   jplerxt | Mar 19, 2007 01:43pm | #2

   Thank you for the great suggestions - I will surely incorporate them.Along these lines, is there any furniture construction book / article / reference you can recommend that deals with the engineering issues such as load bearing and fit-for-purpose design? I see lots of material on techniques and options, but little formality or rigor on the reasoning behind the decisions. Most of it seems very empirical, which is not a bad thing, but I'd like to know more.I'm amazed at how flimsy the "standard" wooden aquarium stands seem, when I look inside them. Is there something I'm missing here?Now about that book... I was referring to the Complete Guide to Furniture / Cabinet Construction. Looks like I'm not up-to-date with my reading. Having looked at the "new" workshop idea book online, it looks relevant and useful, since my "shop" is small - my wife has graciously deemed me a quarter of the basement, and I need a solution foor clamp storage now they they are multiplying.thanks,
   jp

1. 
   woodrae | Mar 19, 2007 04:00pm | #3

   JP—One of my favorite reference books is Timer-Saver Standards for Interior Design and Space Planning (McGraw Hill), but I’m afraid it won’t give comprehensive load bearings, et al. Other than taking college courses in architecture and engineering, I’m not sure where you would find such a reference in a single source.Nothing is wrong with your assessment of commercial stands. The fact is, your eyes are opening up to the world of design, in which there is much mumbo-jumbo, carelessness and a need to design within cost restraints. The commercial furniture world is full of designs that meet only the bare minimum in terms of strength and longevity. Most of the stands I see in stores are flimsy, and as woodworkers—and empirical engineers—we can do much better.Whoa! The CIG to Furniture & Cabinet Construction was my first book, which I started writing in 1999. Have a look at the Workshop Idea Book, but if you haven’t already, browse through a copy of The Complete Illustrated Guide to Working with Wood at your local library, another book in the CIG series that tells you about the material we work with. In fact, I recommend Bruce Hoadley’s book, Understanding Wood (Taunton Press) as a primer, then my CIG Wood book as an in-the-shop reference manual. Both will give you a more solid grounding on the whys and wherefores of the stuff we work with.—Andy