You got your slate in my coffee table, Part III
This is Part III in a 3-or-so part post describing how I made our coffee table.
Part I (with the blueprints) is here.
Part II is here.
Part IV (with pictures) is here.
When we last left our intrepid hero, he had a lovely tabletop sanded to 60 grit with three square 12″x12″ indentations. Time to get our hero some legs, then finish the damn thing.
For each leg, I used six pieces of 6/4 stock (not 4/4 as the plans show). Gluing up in two directions (faces and edges) is a little sketchy, but the glue surface is huge so I decided not to sweat it. Start by gluing up pairs of leg stock face-to-face, so you wind up with six pieces of the correct thickness. Once these dry and you remove the glue that’s squeezed out, give them a quick pass on the jointer so your glue surfaces are true, and finish gluing them up. I actually did each glueup in one swell foop, glueing all six at the same time, but I don’t recommend that; it was a pain in the rear. You can use biscuits for some or all of this to add strength and help with alignment. Finish with a small piece of 4/4 stock on the bottom; this keeps the exposed endgrain to a minimum and looks nice. You may be tempted to joint the bottom before you glue that 4/4 piece on, but resist! As you finish your jointing pass you’re nearly guaranteed to break a chunk off the edge and send it flying unless you’re very careful (sharp blades, small passes, and a piece of backing). Remember, jointing endgrain is one of the sketchiest jointing tasks. Instead, use sandpaper and a level to take care of any protrusions. Or just glue carefully and get it all lined up right the first time. In either case, prep it the same way as you did the table top–liquid walnut and 60-grit. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to go all the way to 220-grit now, since it’s trickier to do once the legs are attached. Ditto for the underside of the tabletop, while I’m thinking about it.
Time to affix the legs. This is easy. Put them in place, glue, and clamp them to the top. The easiest way to clamp them is to put a long piece of 2×4 or other material under them and clamp to that instead, since they’re not quite as wide as the tabletop. Don’t forget to put something between the clamps and your beautiful tabletop. Finally, you’ll notice that the legs are aligned with the slate cutouts. This is handy, since the slate will cover the screws you’re about to sink (not shown in the plans). Drill some holes in the cutouts, making TRIPLE SURE that you’re going to be drilling into the table leg on the other side! Countersink them so the screw heads don’t stick up, and drive some good 2″ woodworking screws in there to cement the legs to the top. Once this dries up, nothing short of a flaming jackhammer will cause your table distress.
OK, this thing’s starting to look pretty good. Next up, slate prep. This was easy. I got three 12″ “Autumn Slate” tiles from Home Depot ($1.98 each) and picked out three of about the right thickness (a little on the thin side). These tiles are ungagued, meaning they have lots of ridges and varying thickness; make sure the thickest point is thinner than your cutout. Wash them thoroughly and let them dry; they’re dusty as heck. Coat them with Minwax Polycrylic (three coats or so) and set them aside to dry.
Time to finish the table itself. I’ll do a full article on shellac later; this will be the short-short version. I’d suggest a little background reading before you jump in, though.
If you haven’t already, sand the whole thing with ever-increasing grits until you get to at least 220 (but I recommend 400). Get yourself some dewaxed garnet shellac and denatured (NOT isopropyl!) alcohol. Put about 2 oz of shellac flakes into a coffee grinder and blend well (this step is optional but makes the next one go much faster). Pour the shellac powder into a jar with about 8 oz of alcohol and shake well once every 30 min until it’s all dissolved (1-2 hours, or just leave it overnight). Note that shellac is foodsafe, so technically you can return the grinder to directly to coffee use, although the spouse might not appreciate you contaminating his/her coffee with bug excretions. Ironically, the only toxic thing about shellac is the methyl alcohol deliberately added to de-tipple the otherwise potable ethyl alcohol. If you have a source of 100% pure ethanol, you can use that instead of denatured alcohol for a great finish (and a hell of a party). But I digress.
Dilute a bit of this shellac 3:1 with more alcohol and paint on two thin coats. Get some powdered pumice, and sprinkle it *very lightly* on a clean cloth. Drip some more alcohol on the cloth and mix around the pumice so it’s thoroughly wetted, then rub it into the pores of the wood. The goal here is to fill the tiny pores, leaving a glossy-smooth surface. Do this for the entirety of the top and sides, but skip the bottom and legs–who’s going to see it. Actually, use the bottom for practice until you get the hang of it so you don’t screw up your top.
Now it’s time to get crazy with the lac bug shells. Paint the undiluted shellac on heavily, using many coats. Once you get a good base on, you can apply it with a pad made of wool wrapped in cotton, as in the traditional french polish method. I wanted a bit of red in my finish, so in a moment of bizarre experimentation, I decided to apply the shellac with a red wool sock wrapped in an old T-shirt. It worked, but my table smells like an old foot. Oh well.
Last step is to attach the slate. The trick here is to take some high quality clear caulk and make five golfball-sized piles of it; one in the center and one 1″ from each corner. Set the slate in its recess and gently, carefully nudge it down until each corner is flush with the surface (squishing down the caulk). Once you get it to the right height, LEAVE IT ALONE until it dries. You can scrape off squeezeout more easily once it’s hardened, but if you push the slate down too far accidentally, you’re out of luck. The nice thing about this method is that if you need to replace the slate, you can crack it with a chisel and pull the pieces out, since the caulk comes off without too much difficulty.
(I spent forever messing around with shellac techniques on the bottom and legs before I was happy with it and moved on to the table top.)
(people are zelots about the whole “french polishing” thing; it’s basically just applying dilute shellac in many, many layers so you get a pretty built-up finish. The paint-then-pad method I used is pretty much just a shortcut that looks just about as good.)
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