wood plans coffee table

hi everybody, i'm mike mccrory and this iswood u make it. my neighbor across the street is retiringfrom the u.s. navy after more than 20 years of service and he's asked me if i would build him a shadow box coffee table so that he can display his medals and other memorabilia. so, what i said back to him is "why don'twe make it together?" that way i can show him a little bit about woodworking and he can take part in creating this for himself. so, let's get started. [theme music playing] the first step is we're going to cut the lumber to rough length -- a little bit oversize --

that'll make it easier to run it through the jointer. we've marked out the portions that we want to cut and now we're going to use the miter saw to cut it into the lengths. [sound of the miter saw] before using the jointer, i made sure thati oriented each piece of wood so that i would be jointing in the direction of the grain.that way i would minimize any possibility of chip-out. i jointed one face and one edge so that i'dhave a nice, flat face and a nice, flat edge and then i was ready to start planing. the planing would give me a parallel faceon the other side.

the jointing and planing is done -- at leastthe first pass of the planing. we've planed the pieces down to be about 1/8" thicker than what we really need. we've done that to give the wood a chance to rest and see if it wants to spring back a little bit, and then we'll do some finalplaning in the next round. for the table legs, cam wants to use a queen anne style of leg. it's not something that i want to spend the time creating myself, so he's ordered these online. these are red oak queen anne style legs and we will mortise them here and here for the table aprons and that should be pretty straightforward. we'll just have to be careful that we don'tmake any mistakes because, you know, when

you make a mistake with regular woodworkingyou can always re-cut a piece to replace it. but with these, these are fairly expensive-- somewhere around $35 - $40 -- and if we make a mistake, we have to order them againonline and wait for them to be delivered. so, we'll be careful. after resting for a few days, the wood wasready to be planed to the final thickness. now i'm measuring the exact lengths of eachpiece. i've purposely cut just a little bit long.you can never put wood back, but you can always cut a little bit more if you need to. and that's exactly what i did here. i measured it again. it was just a fraction of an inch long,

and then i trimmed it to be the perfect length. cam was a little bit uncertain about the designand wanted to be sure that what we were building was going to be large enough to hold his sword.sure enough, it was. now we're cutting the exact widths of thetable aprons. and now we're ready to do a test fit. justa rough test fit. here, i'm very carefully measuring and marking the positions of the mortises in the end pieces of the table top. to cut the mortises, i'm using a plunge router with a spiral up-cut bit and i'm using a mortising jig that i found on a youtube video from finewoodworking.

i'll include the link in the description below. this resulted in nice, clean 3/8" mortiseson the ends of the table top. now on the table leg i'm cutting 1/4" mortises. the reason for the different size mortisesis because of the different thicknesses of the material. the table apron that attaches to the tableleg is 3/4" thick whereas the table top is 1" thick. the tenons that i'm cutting are roughly 1/3 the thickness of the wood. that's why i have 3/8" tenons and 3/8" mortises for the table top and 1/4", which is 1/3 of 3/4", for the tenons that go into the table legs. again, nice clean mortises.

now i'm marking the tenons. i'm using a tenoning jig -- a delta tenoningjig -- to cut the tenons in the ends of the pieces. it gives me very fine control and helps toensure that the tenon is perfectly centered. and now i'm just rounding over the corners of the tenon so that it will fit into the mortise. a nice, clean fit. flush on the tops and thesides. now i'm doing a dry fit just to make sureeverything fits well. and now i'm setting up the table saw to cut the tenons for the table apron. i'm using a block on the fence so that i can position the piece without it being butted up right against the fence to prevent any binding and any potential kick-back.

after making the first two cuts on the table saw, i will finish up on the band saw and cut away the pieces that are not going tobe part of the tenon. so, i'm left just with the tenon piece andthen i'll go back to the table saw use the tenoning jig. and then file them down with a rasp so that they fit into the mortises. next we did a test fit to make sure that the table aprons and their tenons fit into the mortises on the table legs. they fit well, and then we put the table top on top just to have a look. everything is looking pretty good. the table top that we've made so far is really just a frame that's going to hold the glass in place. remember, this is a shadow box, so it's going to have a glass top so you can see through

and see the medals and the sword and everything else that's inside. in order to hold the glass in place, i needto rabbet along this edge. the way that i'm going to do that is to usethe table saw to cut a nice, clean line all the way from one end to the other. then i will notch out these pieces where there is no rabbet. this is the part where the other piece isbutting into it, so that needs to be cleanly notched out. i'll do that on the band saw. the benefit of using the table saw to cutit first is i'll have a nice, clean line on the top surface. that's the part that yousee.

and then, with the band saw if, for one reason or another, if it get just a little bit off kilter, it won't matter. now i'm setting up the table saw to prepare to cut the rabbet in the top pieces. just measuring for the thickness of the glass so that the glass has a nice, flush fit. now we're also cutting the dado for the table bottom that will fit inside these dados. for the table bottom, i'm just cutting out the corners. the corners are going to go around the table legs. now we're doing another test fit. it was important for us to test every step of the way just to make sure that everything was fitting well and that everything was measured correctly. cam's head came in really handy to hold the table bottom in place. we were confident that everything fit well,so we were ready to glue up.

it was a nice, tight fit with the mortise andtenon. we had a use a mallet to tap it into place. it fit very snugly. not too tight,but definitely not loose. and then we set the glass in place to helpmake sure we had a nice, square top. we used pipe clamps to make sure we had a good bond. and then we put it on the table saw to make sure we had a nice, flat top. now, here we've used double-sided tape to attach strips of wood to the inside of the table apron. we're applying glue to the top. the glue is going to attach to the table top. once it's glued up, we can remove the double-sidedtape, and then we've got the strips of wood

to hold the table top in place so that itwon't slide off. now i'm routing the outside edge to have a nice profile on the edge. i did it in multiple passes. here, on the end grain, i'm doing a littlebit of a climb cut at first to prevent any tear-out. then i went to the far end and cut in thecorrect direction. and then sanding prior to finishing up thetable top. i used 120-grit, then 150, then 220-grit. at this point, i labeled all the pieces tomake sure that i was connecting the right piece to the right piece just because therewere some differences in each of the pieces -- just some minor differences.

now we're gluing up the table apron and the legs and installing the table bottom. the table bottom just sits loosely inside the dados. and then using a band clamp around the outside to hold everything in place. here's the whole table glued up. it's looking quite nice at this point. you can see the underside of the table top.those are the strips that we glued in place. i'm beginning the finishing process. i'm starting with a pre-stain. we decided to use a minwax golden pecan stain on the oak. we used a semi-gloss polyurethane for the final finish.

and then we proceeded to install blue feltin the bottom of the table using spray adhesive and double-sided tape. on august 30th, a flag will be flown abovethe u.s.s. carney in honor of cam's service. once we've received that back, we will build a triangular frame for the flag. we'll put that in the table along with his medals. so, check back in september when we will finish up this project.