Popular Woodworking 2002-08 № 129, страница 71

up on small blocks of wood for my machine. (If you are making the cabriole legs yourself instead of buying them, cut the mortises before you shape the legs.)

The aprons are set back ³/l6" from the legs, so your mortises should be located from the outside edge of the leg.

Decisions, Decisions

With the mortises cut, it's time to make a decision. Should you glue the table base together and then cut it apart? Or should you crosscut the long aprons first and then glue up each end?

I find it easier to glue and clamp up the base, let it dry and then cut it apart using my chop saw and the help of a couple family members. (If you're building a table this big, you should have a few of them around.)

After the base is glued up, merely mark the midpoint of the aprons, put the table base on your chop saw and make the cut. Have

your helpers hold the ends, especially on the second cut when the whole thing comes apart. You're going to be surprised at how easy this is to do.

If that all seems too much, you can make the cut using a circular saw. Or you can cut the aprons before you glue up the mortise-and-tenon joint. If that's your decision, I recommend clamping the aprons you cut apart together using an intermediate board to keep everything square as you glue up the base.

Top and Leaves

Now surface all the lumber for the two top pieces and two leaves. Remember that the leaves will have their grain running perpendicular to the grain in the top. Glue up the panels you need for the top and leave them 2" oversized to make cutting the shape of the top easier. You also should leave the leaves a couple inches too long, too, so they can be cut

to fit at the same time as the top.

When the extension leaves are in use in this table, they are kept in the same plane as the top by using dowel pins.

You can buy special dowel pins for extension tables that have a bullet-shaped end. The tapered shape makes them easy to align and slide together. However, I find the pins simple to make using dowel stock and sanding the edges to a bullet shape myself.

Begin by drilling the holes for the dowels in both edges of the leaves and the edges of the top pieces.

The ³/s' -diameter holes should be 1" deep. Drill five holes in each edge: one in the center, two at 10" from the center and two at 20" from the center.

Glue the 1⁷/8"-long pins in place and sand their exposed edge to a bullet shape to make fitting the leaves together easier.

Now put the two top pieces and leaves all together upside down on your bench and lay out

the top. After toying with more complex shapes, I settled on a simple top that was 44" wide with half-round shapes on the ends that are a 22" radius. This shape is sometimes called a "racetrack oval" in furniture circles.

Cut out the shape of the top using your jigsaw. Now put the base in place on the underside of your top and get ready to attach it. As you can see by the photos and cutting list, I added apron pieces to the leaves that match the apron on the table base. These let you use the table fully extended without a tablecloth. Clamp these extra aprons and table base pieces in place on the top and screw everything down tightly.

Using a small punch, I marked a number on the underside of each leaf's edge and the same number at the edge it mates to. This allows the table to look exactly as I intended every time it's set up.

Extension Hardware

You can make your own table slides using a hardwood such as maple and some sliding dovetail joints. But why would you want to torture yourself this way? You can buy the extensions slides from a variety of sources (see the Supplies box at right). The set of slides for this table cost $26.

Table slides are easy to install; there are just a couple tricks. The first thing you want to be careful of is to install the slides perfectly parallel to each other, with the center of each slide 10" from the center of the tabletop. Also, make sure you are installing the slides right-side up (this should be ob-

If you don't have a set of trammel points, here's a good trick.Take your straightedge ruler and drill a small hole at 0" and at the dimension of the radius you want (22" in this case). Drawing the half-round end is then a simple matter with a nail and a pencil.

70 Popular Woodworking August 2002