Building: A Coffee Table

June 7, 2019. In desperate need of a coffee table that wasn't just like any others. One that had storage, was able to be a lazy person work table and a board game table. One may just suggest buying it. But after many weeks of searching for a perfect coffee table to furnish the house, and pinning things here and there on Pinterest. I found a design and a number of coffee tables I liked, but none of them had the functionality I wanted or needed. Many of the ones I did find online were pretty but have no storage. I had the materials from art-easels I had built in 2013, and now felt they were not good enough to sell, but the wood was good enough to repurpose. So I started to dismantle and build! Almost all of the build was from repurposed materials. The hardware and the large plank for part of the bottom was the only thing purchased for the build.

Materials Needed:

• Wood, 2 Hinges, 2 Lift top hydraulic mechanism hardware, Wood glue, Screws, 12 L Brackets, 1 MDF board (for the base), 4 Screw-on feet, Wood oil

Equipment Used:

• Table Saw, Mitre Saw, Jigsaw, Wood planer, Electric Sander & Sandpaper, Electric Drill & Screwdriver, Drill bits, Tape, Ratcheting band clamp, Large Trigger Clamps, Kregg pocket drill jig, Brush & container/bowl, Rags. Safety goggles, gloves, and dusk mask. A shop vac.

The first piece of advice I have to those that have never done woodworking and decide or contemplate on doing woodworking is Safety First.

The second is MATH. There is going to be math. They teach this subject in school for a reason, this is one of those reasons. You're going to need to draw out schematics of what you're building. Figure out the measurements, what angle you're going to need to cut your wood, how much you need, and how much you need to cut off, taking into consideration the width of your blade. Know the depth of your wood, and determine how long your screws need to be and the depth you need to mark your drill bits to make your pilot holes.

After dismantling the easels I did the following...

Steps:

1. Cut the wood (using the Mitre saw) into the sizes I need to make the sides of my coffee table. 2 different sizes. one for the top half and one for the base.
2. I glued and clamped (Using the large trigger clams), drilled and screwed the matching lengths together to a desirable height I wanted for the tops and bottoms. Making 8 pieces. 4 sides for the top. 4 sides for the bottom.
3. Using a belt framing clamp, I clamped and glued together 4 of the sides of the top piece. Using L Brackets at the corners on the insides to reinforcing the corners. On the top and bottom of each corner using a total of 8 L brackets.
4. I cut two 1x8x8 to the length I needed with 45 degrees corners. Then using a Kregg pocket drill jig I prepped the pieces to join together to make a square hole in the center, this hole just smaller than the inner edge on the insides of the base. Drilled them together creating a  flat wooden squared donut. Then drilled pilot holes and screwed in this wooden doughnut onto the bottom side of the top half fo the coffee table.
5. Using the belt framing clap, I clamped and glued together 4 of the sides of the base pieces. Using 4 L brackets, reinforced the close to the top edge of the base. An MDF board cut to the size of the base was drilled to the bottom edges. Creating the base of the coffee table.
6. The top half of the coffee table was then used to map out the pieces needed to create the top of the coffee table.
   This takes a lot of jigsaw-puzzling to figure out, which rows would be better off with one solid piece of wood or an alternating pattern of small and large pieces. These pieces were then put through the table saw to guarantee they were straight and equal-width pieces. So when they were glued, clamped, pilot holed, and screwed together, everything would be uniform and even. Once two plank boards were created, one small and one large for the top of the coffee table, they were reinforced with pieces on what was determined to be the non-exposed part of the top of the coffee table, to help keep them from warping.
7. Everything now has to be planed and sanded. The top and the sides of the top half and base half of the coffee table.
   I gathered up a lot of the sanded wood dust at times and mixed it with wood glue to create my own wood filler and used it to fill any gaps and cracks. Waited for that to dry before sanding it down some more. When I felt everything was as flat as I liked it to be, or "smooth"  I moved onto the next step.
8. Screwing down the top half and the base together. Out of this build, I felt like this was perhaps somewhat of a challenge to do or figure out, especially since this was a solo build. I measured out and drilled pilot holes, put the top onto its base and prayed for my pilot holes to match, and screwed them down to one another.
9. After everything was somewhat put together, I decided I didn't want to paint the piece and opted to finish it with wood oil instead. Then I let it all dry before the final assembly.
10. Install the hinges and lifting hardware. The hinges were attached to the smaller 'top' board and the lifting hardware was installed onto the larger half of the 'top' board.
    NOTE: This could be a bad idea to install last as I found I ran into some difficulties installing it in this order, but what's done is done. (It might be better to have installed these hinges and the hydraulic lifting hardware before screwing the base and top half of the coffee table together.