20 minutes ago, DAB said:

collect the whole set!!

Figuring of all the things I could build to ward off retirement boredom these at least don't take up much room when folded flat.  I suppose when done with the 5th one I'll need a stand to park them all on.  I'd give it a couple wheels and a handle so I can dolly them around easily.  By that time I may have an idea for how to make the stand itself into a useful table when the 5 are off and in use.  

A little better shot of the cherry table. More detail about this one is now live on my blog: https://4dfurniture.blogspot.com/2024/04/tv-tray-table-cherry-refinement-in.html

 

Fantastic 4D!

Pulled out of a stack, crosscut, jointed and have now in clamps 3 strips of hard Maple that will be the top of a Maple version of the TV Tray Table.  Doubt that it'll look as nice as the Cherry version. Might give it a Deft finish to keep the color light.  Leg shape will be different but I'll use the straps as the tension member like the Cherry version does. No hurry as I have plenty of these tables to use already. 

 

Edit:  Also found some old Maple salvaged from a desk frame.  There was enough to resaw, plane, crosscut, joint to glue up for the stretchers of the maple version. 

4D

Edited April 13, 20242 yr by 4DThinker

Found another board of maple.  8" wide, but looked pretty rough.  Cut 31" of it.  Enough length for all 4 legs.  Surfaced it down to 7/8" thick, smooth both sides. Jointed one edge, then ripped 4 slices a little wider than 7/8" for the legs.  Ran them though my drum sander to remove saw cut marks/burns to end up with 7/8" x 7/8" cross section clean leg strips.   

Checked my cad drawing in Aspire for the final lengths of each.  Leaving that for tomorrow.

Took the glued up blank I made for stretchers and scrape off any squeeze out before letting my drum sander clean both sides and bring the thickness down to a perfect 5/8".  Drum sander has essentially 1/128" precision for each 1/8 rotation of the height handle.  Easy to sneak up on a precise dimension checked with my digital caliper.   Cut a 3" wide and a 2" wide strip from that board to become the stretchers.   Done with this for today.  Will likely have all the parts cut to final size tomorrow and round over ends and edges done on those parts that need it. 

4D

 

Got the inner legs cut to length, rounded end, and mortises cut for the stretcher tenons. 

Got the stretchers cut to length and tenons cut both ends.  Made one human error which will require a patch/plug to a 2" mortise that started cutting 3" long.  That'll get the inner leg frame joinery all done. 

The top gave me some grief with a glue line step that was too low to plane out.   I had extra width in the panel so I cut down that glue line, joined back the low edge to get rid of it, then put the two panel sections back together with some dowels to make sure they were lined up.  Top panel now cut to final dimensions and rounded front and back edges done.  Sure put up a fight though.  Lots of wild grain in the maple boards.  Bucked and fought as it went through the 7/8"d roundover bit.  Much clean up to do with the rounded edges.  Might see if I can get a nice straight grain maple board and start over with the top. 

4D  

Edited April 14, 20242 yr by 4DThinker

CNC cut a good fitting patch for the mortise mistake.  Glued it in. When glue was dry I used a flush trim bit in my router table to cut the patch  flush.  Hard to even tell the mistake was there now. 

Been working on the table top's edges.   A couple of dips and blown out chips to blend in.   Almost have the edges smooth after quite a bit of scraping/sanding/scraping.   Far more work than I expected thanks to some gnarly maple.  

Thought this one was going much faster than the cherry version, but human mistakes and troublesome maple put me a step behind.  Outer leg strips need some focused attention and I'm out that today. Tomorrow I'll work on them, all the pivot bolt holes and slots and binding bolt holes.   I can see how these could be made quickly and mass produced efficiently but it would take a factory with several stations set up for the individual machining steps.  I can re-use many of the toolpaths I used on the cherry version.  The only different part will be the outer legs. 

Should have gone to be earlier last night. Made another mistake while working on the outer legs.  First one I picked the wrong toolpath to cut the rounded top end and it cut it just where the shorter inner leg's end would have been.  Cut the end off, and figured out that I have 1/2" of material to spare if I want to "fix" the leg to extend it.   Made two joinery toolpaths to splice the wood back together to be long enough. 

Plan to use a 1/8" end mill.  I came up with the joint to stretch the 2" x 2" legs on my end table, but have never gotten around to that.  This will the first test of it.   

4D

Tight fit, but did work.  Have it glued up flush now.  

Edited April 15, 20242 yr by 4DThinker

Glue dried. Cleaned up the sides.  Stuck it back onto the CNC bed to cut the end roundover.   Got 1/8" from the bottom of the cut and maple reminded me it was in charge.  Bit broke but not before grabbing into the end grain and leaving a few angled score grooves in the end.   Decided with only one end left to round over I would do it the old fashioned way.  Band saw to trim off close to a line I drew with a circle template.  Took it out to my disk sander to sand down to the line.  Maple wanted to burn but I got close. Left a little to hand sand.  Now all the parts have the rough work done.  A few holes, a couple slots, some 1/8" rounding over of edges left to do.    Maple all along has tried to convince me I should have stopped with the Cherry version.

4D

Edited April 15, 20242 yr by 4DThinker

With what I thought were all the parts cut to size I thought it was time to lay them out to verify.  First obvious mistake was that the table top was narrower than the inner leg frame by 1/4".  They need to be the same width to work, and since I can't stretch the top the only fix was to trim 1/4" off one end of the stretchers and recut the tenons on that end.  Done. Now inner leg frame width matches the top width.   The top, which has given me the most  grief, was sitting funny laying on the legs.  Hard to visually see, but clearly it has 1/8" or so of warp from corner to diagonal corner.  This was the only top I glued up from just three 5" wide board sections cut from the same 6' long x 4/4 board.  All the others were glued up from narrow strips ripped and tipped from slices of boards that weren't anywhere near the needed thickness.  They all are as flat as my table saw steel bed is.   I'm declaring the maple top as a reject, and starting over on making a new one. 

4D 

This one is keeping you challenged for sure.

1 hour ago, Grandpadave52 said:

This one is keeping you challenged for sure.

One board.  One maple board. It has been in my garage for several years.  One of two.  The other one provided material for the legs and stretcher.   They suffered some human errors and broke one router bit but now are a leg frame awaiting a top.    

I've encountered boards like this nasty one before. Boards that snuck onto a load of lumber hoping no one would notice them.  Boards that can't be cut safely thanks to internal stresses that will warp them if you succeed.  They'll clamp  down on the table saw blade and dare you to let go so they can kick back to try and hurt you. They'll chip out if you make the mistake of running them through a planer. They'll throw any part you cut off back at you no matter the machine you used.   Such boards make up the scary stories we read about that convince woodworkers to give up the trade.  

4D   

Just got back from a trip across town to my local Menards.   Picked up a 6' x 5.5" x 3/4" thick nice straight grain board of maple.   Actually lower in price than their web site stated.  Should be enough material for a new table top.  Time will tell.  

I've been relying on my 19" drum sander to clean up panels after they've been glued up.  I've had 80 grit paper on it since new until the maple top finally wore it out.  Switched to 60 grit and that was a mistake.   I have a 13" wide planer I can use if I make the 14.25" wide top in two parts.   If the new maple board is nice the planer can handle it.  If the new maple board has wavy grain in it I've seen the planer tear such out badly.   Guess I'll find out which this is. 

4D  

I have some 80 grit for my drum sander but have only used it a couple of times; scratches are too deep.  I can't imagine running 60 grit, that's almost like road gravel.

8 minutes ago, difalkner said:

I have some 80 grit for my drum sander but have only used it a couple of times; scratches are too deep.  I can't imagine running 60 grit, that's almost like road gravel.

I started with a 100 grit strip but it wouldn't make any progress in that nasty maple board.  You're right though about 60 grit.  Maybe for initial cleanup on a ragged glued up panel, but leave the last few passes for something finer.  One of the reasons I'm starting fresh with some new Maple.   

Crosscut to 20".  Ripped the maple board into 15/16" wide strips to tip 90 degrees and glue up,  Had to add a few strips from scraps I already had in my garage.  Taking my time to glue up two at a time as that way I can make sure they are flush together and haven't slipped.  2+2 then will make 4 strip sections.  4+4 will make an 8 strip section. I've got 19 strips so the math isn't perfect, but hopefully when I'm done I'll have 2 sections to run through my planer hoping to end up with both perfectly 7/8" thick.  I'll glue them together using dowels to be sure they are flush to each other.  

There may yet be some hope for a maple version of my TV tray table design.   Knocking on wood.

4D

Edited April 16, 20242 yr by 4DThinker

Finished gluing up 2 halves of the new table top.  Took them both out to my planer to see how it would do with hard maple.   It did the hard work of levelling off the glued up halves, but also wanted to chip out and snipe, so I quite with still 1/32" or so of thickness left.   Put 100 grit roll of sandpaper on my drum sander and slowly worked on both sides of both halves.  One half ended up perfect at 7/8" thick.  The other is also 7/8" thick but with a tiny bit of snipe still evident on one side and a low strip on one side/corner that never got touched.  I have a little width and length I can trim off, and might be able to hide the step where the raised ledge gets put on the slanted side.  

Still with a little grief thanks to maple, but in far better shape than my first try at a top.  There is some hope for a Maple TV Tray Table but it'll have a few war wounds when done. 

4D

The top needs front and back edges rounded over.  This step with the original top pointed out that the router bit I was using needed to be retired.   I've drawn up a  moulding toolpath to do the roundovers on my CNC.  Tiny 10% steps with a 3/16" ball nose bit shouldn't have any problem with the maple. 

4D

CNC did a good job of rounding over the front and back edges of the top.

Next came putting a 1/8" radius roundover on all the outer edges of the top and legs.  Did that with my Milwaukee trim router clamped in my bench vise.  Had a minor mishap when the bit lock lever slipped and the roundover bit went a tiny bit too deep.  Tightened up the bit lock cam lever, reset the height of the bit before continuing. I'd cut the top width 1/16" wider than needed so I could joint 1/32" off each saw cut end to remove blade swirl marks, so I jointed the end that the bit had slipped on, and re cut the roundover.  Worked fine.  Jointed the other end before rounding it's edges.  All done with the top save for holes for pivot bolts and binding bolts and possibly slots for straps.  All critical holes on the agenda for tomorrow.