I made this solid oak TV unit, but the weight is a bit of a problem. This is 500 high and weighs approximately 100 kilos. I could have used softwood, but the end result would not be the same.

This is made for my cousin, who wanted the same, but was going to buy one from Ebay. Instead I asked him to send me the link so I can see what he wanted.

– 3 No. oak sleepers 200mm x 100mm x 1200mm (8″ x 4″ x 48″)

– 1 No. oak board 200mm x 38mm x 2500mm (8″ x 1.5″ x 100″)

– Threaded rod 12mm x 400mm

– Biscuits, Glue

The tools used are the same I use on the job

– Circular Saw, Biscuit Router

– Router, Drill, Drill Bits, Sander

The sleepers I collected are from a yard sale I stumbled upon. Since we had heavy showers around the time I left them to dry a little, at least on the surface. I can’t afford to wait for them to be drying more since it be a couple of years before that happens.

Let me clarify something real quick. The sleepers I got are brand new and weren’t used as railways previously. Older sleepers use to be treated with creosote and aren’t suitable or safe for indoor furniture. However they can used outside with the exception that children don’t touch them.

I wanted to cut them to length, but my table saw cuts to 55mm and they are 100mm thick. I had to do two passes and ended up with 800mm long log and 4 pieces 400mm long, for the legs.

Next I had to join all the pieces together. I thought about using glue, but it won’t be reliable enough. Instead I used a combination of glue and biscuits, which showed more promise. Upon that, I used a biscuit router to cut full length grooves on both timbers. The two were quite hard to line up and clamp together but once done it wasn’t easy to pull the apart. 

The two timbers weren’t quite flush at the two ends so I used the table saw to trim them. There was a problem. I tried placing them on my table extension, but the weight was far too much. My table extension were bending little by little. So I abandoned this method. Instead I reached out for my circular saw, changed it with a piece of laminate flooring for a guide for a deep enough 100mm cut for the timbers. After, I sanded all the parts with a belt sander then switched to random orbital sander.

To fix the legs to the table I drilled 12mm holes at the top so they can drop in some 12mm bar. 

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