Circular Table Tops

Now that the blanks have sat for awhile, today I started the next step.



First everything had to be milled to size. This meant running things through the jointer again to get one flat side, then the planer to get the opposite side parallel. Then back to the jointer to square and flatten one edge, and finally to the table saw to square and parallel the other edge.

For the pie-wedges, squaring the corners is critical. So after flattening both faces, I used a carefully aligned crosscut sled on the table saw to square the gluing surfaces.

Glue up is tricky because of the odd shape of these pieces. After laying out and marking each top, I jointed the mating edges simultaneously on the jointer, with the marked faces together (like closing a book, then running the spine through the jointer). Then cut biscuit slots to reinforce the joint, since it will be an end grain joint.

After liberally gluing both surfaces and the slots, I assembled the joint and used a bar clamp for one end and a screw on the other. The end with the screw in it will be cut off as waist when the glue-up is cut to it's final circular shape.


That created halves for the finished tops. Then each pair of halves were jointed, biscuited, liberally glued and clamped. Because the odd position of the joint relative to the clamps, I again used screws to secure the corners.



At this point I have also made two circular templates, one for the tops and the other for the shelves. I made the templates with a router and circle cutting jig. Because the jig requires a peg hole in the board, I didn't want to use it directly on the finished parts. The templates are marked into quarters on the edges. Those marks will be used to center the jig on the joints of the glue-ups later.

After the glue had cured completely, I had the glue-ups surfaced with a wide-belt sander to smooth them out on both faces. Then I used my templates to mark the circles, and cut off the waist wood using the band saw. Finally, the templates were secured to the glue-ups with carpet tape and a templating bit on the router cleaned up the edges.