A co-worker introduced me to Fine Woodworking Magazine, and I was instantly hooked.  But, at the same time, I was worried that I would never be able to come anywhere near to matching some of the quality that I saw in the magazine.  I decided to try the Round Table with Gary Rogowski as my first Fine Woodworking project, mostly because of the video series helping me out.

I built this one out of pine for a couple of reasons… First, as a test run, I wanted to make sure that I could actually do the things I needed to do in order to produce the table.  Second, it’s inexpensive – living in Hawaii, getting wood is difficult, and expensive.  Third, I had plenty on-hand from a previous project!

The jig I made to cut the circles on the band saw was a combination of the jig used in the video series and  one from another plan on finewoodworking.com.  After a little fine-tuning of my band saw, the circles turned out perfectly!

I followed the video series for cutting the through-mortise and the tenons, but rather than use a router, I went back to the drill press to make the mortises for the bottom rails, then rounded the tenons for the rails to fit.

The top and shelf were stained and then I followed the “High Gloss in Minutes” with Sean Clarke series to put a nice shine on those pieces – even on pine, with some imperfections I wasn’t able to work out, the tops glow.

So now, if you’ve read this much, maybe you can help me out… I want to do this project again – I’d like to make it out of Walnut and Maple.  My wife would like it a little taller, about 3 ft. rather than the 2 ft. – the diameter is good…  Should I move up the bottom rails and shelf, or should I leave them at the same height?

Second – when I attempted to use the router on the circles, I ended up with sort of a scalloped edge – nothing at all like the nice smooth circle I started out with!  Any suggestions?

Thanks for the help!

Dale

 

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