When we consider how to make a wooden table for the kitchen or dining room, many of us might think that we won’t be able to make a beautiful and sturdy table (or very sturdy if we want to make a workbench). While building a table as a professional carpenter might be out of reach for everyone, we can make one with just a few tools and some simple woodworking techniques for amateurs. And when I talk about a few tools, I mean little more than a circular saw, a dowel jig, and a drill, with which we can create simple but strong joints between the legs and the rails. And as proof, there’s a photo of Matthias Wandel happily jumping on the table.
In this instance, you can read two articles where he makes the same type of table, with the legs and rails joined using wooden dowels, with just a few modifications in the construction. In the first article, the joints are made by drilling the holes for each dowel all at once through the legs and into the table rails, while in the second case, he uses a dowel jig with a few tricks to drill the holes and ensure they align correctly on both pieces to be joined (he simply takes great care when measuring the position of the dowel jig with a tape measure).
You will also see differences in how the tabletop is attached. In the first case, he glues wooden blocks inside the rails to screw the tabletop from them, while in the second case, he avoids the issue of a rail that is too high for the screws by drilling holes wide and deep enough to sink the screws so that they protrude from the top and can anchor the tabletop to the table.
You’ll also be interested to know that you can find free plans for this table, that the table is easily disassembled, and that it can be used as a workbench in the home woodworking shop. Although he didn’t record a video for the first article, the second one includes a complete photo report with step-by-step explanations of the construction process, as well as a video for which I already sent the Spanish subtitles to be incorporated. You just need to activate them in the YouTube player.
You can find the links to both articles in Spanish about how to make this wooden table in the woodworking projects tab of this blog, and there go to the Woodgears translations (number 3).