Restaurant Booth Project

I've got my first big project for the all lumber that I made - a pair of restaurant booths for a local bar. It's for Calhoon's Pub in Newfane, which is where I play volleyball in the summer. I was good friends with the former owners, Jeff and Cheryl, but they recently both passed away.

My buddy Greg, who's a recently unemployed machinist, has been helping me. We're using live edge slabs for the tabletops and benches, and we've been surfacing them by hand because they're too wide for my machines.



We glued up the first tabletop tonight. The underside isn't surfaced yet and there was still a bit of a cup to it so we had to use a few shims to line up the joint. Running that thing on edge through the jointer was definitely a 2 man operation and required a few "practice" attempts before we had a nice glue joint.



Onto some legs tomorrow - yeah, we'll be working on labor day... Actually he volunteered to! I think Greg is getting almost as excited as I am about the project - and the potential business down the road.

 

Nice looking project so far. It's nice to know the fruits of your labor, milling your own timber can create such nice things with your head and hands...looking forward to progress pics.

 

Shawn, when u get a chance give me a suggestion for a 20" and 24" bar for my 6421. Chain ideas too...obviously this is not my area.
thanks

 

Great project going on there. Nice that you have the ability, materials and most of the tools needed to do this.

Are you using any mechanical fasteners holding the edges together?

 

Thanks! Not so far. I wanted to avoid biscuits or anything like that if I could, because I think I might have had some trouble with them, not having the faces perfectly flat. They also require more curing time for the joint before you can continue working on it. I've got my fingers crossed right now hoping it will hold.

 

I'm not too familiar with the dolmar/makitas - I want to dmsay they could take husky mount bars. Barcroftb would know.

I worked on the parts for the tables today. The foot and apron connect to the legs with bridle joints. I started off trying to hog out the waste with my dado stack, but switched over to mallet and chisel after the first one.

That actually went pretty quick - turns out them old ways still work pretty good.



If you look close here you can see the profile I'm using for the feet and aprons.

 

Yup large mount husky D009 for the 6421. I have a 24" total light and tough on my 7910 most of the time and it balances really well. My IS heats my home you will probably get some really great suggestions if you ask this question in the chainsaw section.


As far as the project Shawn looks great so far! Can't wait to see the rest of the project unfold. Excited for you Brother!

 

Looking good. Cutting the waste from those notches is where a radial arm saw can shine. Joinery is quite a precise skill.

Are you pegging the bridle joints?

 

Actually I started off using the radial arm to define the shoulders. But the dado stack - even just the outer 2 blades, was too much for my grandfather's old .75HP DeWalt MBF to handle. I had the blade stall out on me twice, and both times it knocked the bevel tilt out of place, requiring an adjustment to bring it square again. That's about when I gave up and decided to chop the rest with a mallet and chisel.

I'm planning to peg all the joints with black walnut. I'd like to make them myself if I can get consistent enough results without too much hassle and expense. My plans call for 32 4" pins for the tables, and 108 2" pins for the benches.

 

That is a lot of material to take out with a dado. Old school chisel is good.

I've made jigs out of 1/4" plywood with a small hole drilled for centerpoints. A quick hit wit a center punch tool marked consistent places for holes to be drilled. Pretty accurate.

 

Progress update - had a bit of a setback earlier this week. The table in the first set of pics ended up being a learning experience. We didn't have the joint square enough with the face and that introduced more than 1/2" of cup to the panel.

I figured out a better way to square the edges up and managed to get the 2nd table jointed and glued by myself. I used my router station like a jointer, with a 2" spiral bit and the out feed fence shimmed out 1/32". Then last night we ripped the first one in half again and straightened that one out too.



Bridle joints are almost there - still a little too tight but it's pencil lead and sandpaper from here. Very very happy how these turned out.



Hopefully I'll have some table pics coming this weekend!

 

It's fixed - its the one currently in the clamps. Its nice and flat now. Luckily that one was originally an inch wider than the other top (standing up). Now they're the same at 30-32".

There was no way I was giving up on them. The 4 slabs used in the table tops are sequence matched from the same log.

 

Tedious, but clean work. Looking good.

 

Getting there..

 

Very nice Shawn