Twisted table base
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Tagged: trestle table, twist
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1 October 2015 at 12:46 am #130962
I searched through the site and couldn’t/didn’t find anything on this (or I missed it). I just finished the trestle table, sized down to a coffee table. It rocks, and it would appear that it does so because the base – legs and stretcher – is twisted. The feet wobble on the floor, and the top (haven’t fixed it down yet) wobbles in a similar fashion on the top.
I think I know how to go about fixing this (planing out the high spots on the stretchers and feet) but if any one has any good ideas, I’m all ears.
I’d also like to find out where I went wrong. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Ian5 October 2015 at 6:17 am #131046Before I go any further, is the table sitting on a flat surface?
Here’s my thinking on this. In the table design, if the center stretcher is not perfectly straight (that is, if it has a little twist), then the table will have twist and not sit right on a flat surface. I think the way that the aprons are attached to the table will help, but I don’t know how much. Given that the stretcher is already complete, you probably can’t fix that, unless you make another stretcher. If you continue with the current stretcher, use very long winding sticks on the feet and the aprons to show the twist and to figure out where to plane.
I’m not sure about how/if the flatness or straightness of the apron members would affect the twist of the table if the stretcher had been perfect.
Please let us know how it turns out and what you did to fix it.
I’m not so sure about the importance of the stretcher, Matt. We made a coffee table in Paul’s class that is a scaled down version of the trestle dining table (in fact, I think of the dining table as a scaled up coffee table :-). The dovetailed apron is quite rigid and I’d expect it would win out over the trestle, unless the trestle is really out of whack. You could be right, though.
I had the same question as you- Is it on a level floor? How thick of a shim is needed at the floor to keep it from wobbling? If it isn’t very much, could you just scribe the feet? That will settle the rocking. Then you’d need to address the apron with a plane to stop the top from rocking.
Plan B: Make your turn buttons, attach the top, and then see what things look like for the whole assembly. Attaching the top could change things. Not sure I’d want to scribe the feet without the top on.
6 October 2015 at 2:05 am #131070Thanks for the ideas.
Short story short, it was the skirt. Sloppy dovetails caused a bit of twist.
The fun part was figuring it out. I spent a good hour with winding sticks and shims trying to isolate the problem. Wouldnt you know it was dead simple? I put the top on just to see how much gap I had and suddenly there was no problem. Seems the weight of the top was enough to straighten it out, mostly.
@ed – I believe you called it. -
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