Joinery for a japanese-inspired table frame
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Hello fellow woodworkers!
I’m putting together a large-ish outdoor table that I can put together when hosting guests at our summer cottage. The idea is to be able to take it apart and store it flat against the wall in some storage space.
Anyway, I’ve got the inspiration to create a frame like the one you can see in the first picture. Since I want the two horizontal beams to meet with the leg, the main joint becomes a bit of a puzzle. I think I can manage that, but I’m not so sure about the strength of the end result. I’m thinking I need to add some wedges to prevent the leg from splitting e.g. when someone is leaning on the edge of the table. Any thoughts on this?
I would like to search online for examples of similar joinery, but I don’t know what this joint would be called so I’m so far unsuccessful at finding anything.
The material will be pine, since there is quite a lot of it at the cottage. The legs would be 8cm x 8cm (that’s around 3″ x 3″) and the horizontal beams are 4cm x 8cm.
Any thoughts on strengths or weaknesses of this design are very much appreciated!
Manne
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You must be logged in to view attached files.Hi,
thanks for the thoughts raze599. My customer (who is my mother), doesn’t want a horizontal beam at the bottom, and also doesn’t want legs in the corners, so I need to come up with a design that meets these criteria.
But I think you are right on the stability. Currently I’m aiming for a design that I saw in a shaker furniture book some time back (see attached image). It does away with the lengthwise support past the legs towards the end of the table, which is a thing I’d still like to see, so if anyone has ideas on how to make such a joint work, please comment!
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You must be logged in to view attached files.http://www.timothyclark.com/t_ttable.html
It looks to me like a tressel design. Ck out on line some successful geometries. Most tressel columns are around 8″ wide. Your tressel has to resist the load of someone leaning on the outside corner of the top. Three inches isn’t wide enough. Plenty thick.
Hi Robert, thank you for the link! He certainly uses a much more beefy structure than what I had in mind (and also harder wood). The table I’m building will be more narrow (80cm/32″), so I imagine this will allow for a slightly lighter construction. But for sure I will keep in mind that our guests might sit/lean on the table.
Manne
Just thought I’d follow up on what became of this project. In the end what I put together was a quite traditional trestle table. Attached is a picture of it.
It’s made out of pine and spruce, most of it from a tree that was cut down to make space for the terrace where the table now stands. The leg joinery is done using drawbored mortice & tenons.
I used a few power tools to work the top; the boards had a lot of twist and it took several days of planing to straighten them out.
I’m really happy about how the top turned out, and in general with the proportions of the entire thing.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by manne.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by manne.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by manne.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.11 August 2016 at 3:33 am #139259The table looks very nice. The live-edge top is attractive, too. Very beefy – I’m sure it will withstand people sitting on an edge. And the tusk-tenon allows the base to be taken apart, so you succeeded in meeting all you design criteria. Well done and thanks for following up with the final product.
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