When we consider how to make a wooden table for the kitchen or dining room, many of us think that we will not be able to make a beautiful and sturdy table (or very sturdy if we want to make a workbench). Although making a table as a professional carpenter would make it, that is something that perhaps is not within everyone’s reach. But we can make one with a few tools and some simple amateur woodworking techniques. And when I say few tools, I mean little more than a circular saw, a doweling jig and a drill. Yes, with that simple tools we can make simple but strong wood joints between the legs and the aprons. And as proof there is a picture with Matthias Wandel jumping happily on the table.
On this occasion you can read two articles where he makes the same type of table, with the legs and the aprons joined with wooden dowels, and only with some modifications in the making. In the first article the joints are made by drilling the holes for each dowel directly through the legs and into the table aprons at once. In the second making he uses a doweling jig for which he has to use a couple of woodworking tricks to be able to drill the holes and make them match and line up on both pieces to be joined (he is simply very careful to measure the position of the doweling jig using the tape measure).
We will also see differences when it comes to joining the table top: In the first making he glues some blocks of wood inside the aprons to be able to screw the table top from those blocks; while in the second case he avoids the handicap of a apron too high for inserting the screws from the bottom edge of the aprons, by drilling holes wide and deep both enough to be able to sink the screws in them and enough for the screws to come out of the top edge of the aprons and screw the table top.
You will also like to know that you will 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, too. And although for the first article he did not record a video of the making process, in the second one he has a complete photographic report with step by step explanations of the making process, as well as a video for which I already sent him the subtitles in Spanish so that he can add them. All you have to do is activate them in the YouTube player.
You have the link to both articles in Spanish on how to make this simple wood tables in the woodworking projects tab of this blog and there go to Woodgears translations (number 3).
