[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] Welcome to "The Woodsmith Shop."

The project for today's episode solves one of the great dinnertime problems.

You're deep into a board game session when you realize it's time to eat.

The project is a game table which features a recessed playing surface.

When it's time to pull out the pizzas, you can slide some panels right into place, cover over the top of it, and you're ready to go.

All of your game pieces stay ready for action.

Now, if you want to build along with us, the plans are at our website WoodsmithShop.com.

Let's play!

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... ...Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The construction of our game table begins by constructing a frame.

A frame of 3-inch by 5-inch walnut.

Two sides, two ends.

But there's a trick here.

We can't cut a miter effectively on a 3-inch piece of wood.

And we need to laminate our 3 1/2 inch stock.

So what I'm going to do is go ahead and cut an inner and an outer frame, miter all the corners, then glue things together.

There's a couple of different ways which we can cut a good clean miter on an inch and a half piece of lumber.

Certainly you could use a cross-cutting miter saw.

A table saw sled will work fine.

I've got a fixed 90-degree miter gauge here, and I'm clamping my wood securely to it and running it through.

Well, I finished cutting all the parts for my ends, and you can see I've glued this one up and we have a nice 3-inch thick solid end that really has some heft to it.

And we have a nice large miter here.

The sides are a little bit different.

They're different because we're going to create a socket for a sliding dovetail.

And that dovetail is going to be the legs on each side of the sides.

And we're going to create that by gluing up three individual parts onto the face of the side.

So I have a center and I've already clipped my ends at 7 degrees.

And I've got some indexing marks to follow.

So I'm going to glue that up.

And once I'm done with that, I'm going to use this little spacer block which represents the leg.

And then I'll be able to mark and trim each individual end and glue those in place, and we should have a perfect fit when we add our legs.

Alright, with the ends and the sides all glued up, we need to think about how we're going to join all those miters together.

What I'm going to do is use loose tenons, and you can see I've got one right here.

And this is just something I made.

It is 1/4 inch by 3/4 of an inch by an inch and a half.

And then I took a router and just rounded over the edges with an 1/8-inch bit.

So a loose-fitting tenon.

I'm going to use four of these on each of my corners.

So I've got some layout lines here.

And I've got my plunge router set up with a 1/4-inch upcut bit and the fence set.

So every one of these miters is going to receive four mortises for four tenons.

Well, before we can glue up our sides and our ends I need to add some T-track.

This is wooden T-track.

There's some really cool accessories which are going to go on our game table for cups and chips and things like that, and they are going to attach and ride on a slot that we cut on the ends and the sides that form our wooden T-track.

So to cut our wooden T-track, I'm using this bit here.

And that's going to fit a 1/4-20 T-bolt.

Now on the ends.

I don't want the T-slot running the whole length.

It's going to be stopped about 4 inches from each end.

So in order to accommodate this bit, I need to drill a hole as a starting point.

And that will also be the point which we can insert the T-bolt for the accessories.

So I'll do one half at a time.

When we do the sides, that T-track runs between the two legs, so that's just going to be one long run.

It's glue up time.

So on the ends here, I've been putting a little glue in the mortises and buttering up these tenons.

Getting them in.

I'm using hide glue because I want a little extra time.

Epoxy would be great too.

There's enough going on here without having to worry about the glue setting up.

I'm just going to kind of loosely clamp two... along the length of each side to begin with.

So what we want to do now is just carefully bring our joint in tight a little bit at a time by clamping both these long clamps and the short ones.

Okay, everything looks pretty square.

So I'm going to go ahead and go through my clamps again and my corners to make sure there the miters meet accurately and get things cleaned up.

And then I just have to be patient and let all this dry.

Logan: Now that Chris has the frame of this top together, we can work on the base.

Now the base consists of two parts.

We have dovetailed legs that go clear to the ground.

Now, there's no shoulder on these legs, so that dovetail cut's easy to do with a table saw.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

And to connect those legs we have two stretchers.

There's one right underneath this frame and then one down at the floor.

So these legs are the first thing to take care of.

Now, as I mentioned, these are dovetailed all the way down.

So we just have to tilt the blade of the saw and make a rip on both sides to create this shape.

Instead of trusting the gauge that's on the saw.

what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to take a measurement here at this frame.

So I'm going to use a bevel gauge and set that to match up the angle that Chris cut here and tighten that down.

Now this bevel gauge becomes my reference to set the saw blade to the right angle.

So let's go ahead and head over there.

Set the blade up and make these cuts.

Alright.

So I have that angle dialed in.

Now I've loaded up a glue line rip blade here.

That's going to give us the smoothest cut possible.

Which is good because those cuts are going to be the mating surface of the dovetail in that frame.

So now what we're going to do is take our leg blanks, and we're going to make a cut down one side.

Now to dial in this fit it's going to become the second fence setting when we're ripping the opposite side.

So I'm going to start by going ahead and ripping one side of each.

And then with one of these extra-long blanks I'm going to cut the end off.

And I'm going to use that as a test gauge.

I'll make a cut on that second side, test the fit and adjust as necessary.

Once I have the fit, and I want a good friction fit, I'll go ahead and lock that fence in and cut the rest of the legs.

There we go.

Those legs fit really nicely.

So now we have to connect each pair of legs with a pair of stretchers.

There's gonna be two stretchers.

One that's going to be right under this frame supporting that weight.

And then another down here by the foot of the leg to connect the stretchers to the legs.

We're gonna use a mortise and tenon.

So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to chop some mortises on the inside faces of these legs, and that starts at the drill press by hogging out some waste.

Now each leg has a pair of mortises in it.

One on the top and one on the bottom.

And I can do that here at the drill press with a couple of different setups.

So the first thing I've done is I've positioned the fence to define the end of the mortise.

And I've also added a stop block to position my leg left and right.

So I'm going to drill that side of this mortise on each of the legs first before removing the stop block, flipping it to the other side, and then spinning my workpiece around.

That allows me to define that other edge, and it'll be heading over to the bench with a chisel to clean them up.

Now the drill press leaves us with these overlapping holes, with this little triangle of waste in the center that we have to remove.

The end goal is that we have a mortise that looks like this -- perfectly oval.

Now, You could square up these corners, and that would make the work on the tenons a little bit easier.

But I'm going to go ahead and leave these rounded, and we will round over the corners of the tenons in a little bit.

So to chop those out, what I like to do is I just grab a ruler and a marking knife, and I line that ruler up so that it is aligned with the bottom of those holes.

And then I just make a knife mark to give me some form of gauge when I am chopping.

And we'll do that on both sides.

There we go.

And now you might be tempted just to stick your chisel in that knife line and pound away all that waste.

But what that can do is actually put your -- push your chisel past that knife line.

So I like to take this in a couple bites and I put safety glasses on because it does like to throw chips all over.

But we'll start just by nibbling it away.

[ Wooden mallet tapping ] And then we'll just work back maybe in three steps to get to that line.

Then that last chop, I will actually stick that chisel right in that knife mark I made.

And then I'm going to stand back, look at the back of the chisel, make sure it looks like it's 90 degrees to the work surface, and then we'll chop it down.

[ Wooden mallet tapping ] Now the final piece of joinery to do on this base is going to be to cut tenons on the stretchers that go in those mortises we just made.

And I'm gonna do that here at the table saw.

I've already loaded up a dado blade and a sacrificial rip fence.

Then I scooch that fence over so it's covering the blade, and as I make a cut, I'm going to form a rabbit along one side.

And by flipping the workpiece over, we're going to form a tongue.

Now I'm going to have to do two setups here to create those front and back cheeks.

And then I'm going to stand these aprons onto edge and raise that blade up to match the size of tenon.

Now I have a couple of offcuts here.

I'm going to sneak up on this fit, and I want it to fit nice and snug inside of that mortise.

And then once I'm happy with that, I'll go ahead and cut it on all my parts.

Now those tenons off the table saw are square, and we have to round them over to fit in our mortises.

We can do that a couple of different ways.

You can simply grab a rasp or a file.

And file to the line.

I like to give myself a guideline just with a simple circle template, just matching that 1-inch radius from the 1-inch drill bit we made those mortises with.

However, you're never going to see this, and I don't really care if it's a perfect fit.

I want the glue surface on the sides of the tenon.

So what I'm going to do is grab a pull saw, flex the blade up just a little bit so the teeth don't score the shoulders.

I'm just going to nip the bottom of that tenon a little bit.

[ Blows dust ] And now I can grab a chisel.

Cover up that round-over line I made and just pop it off.

This is going to leave me with an octagon-shaped tenon, but that's fine.

My glue surface is here on the cheeks anyways.

So once I do this with all the tenons, we'll go ahead and get this base glued up and apply it to the frame.

Alright, now with those tenons rounded, we're ready to go ahead and assemble this base.

Now everything here has to come together kind of at once.

I guess theoretically, you probably could glue up the stretchers to the legs and then come back later and put them into the frame, but I think there's gonna be just a little bit more wiggle room while that glue is wet.

So I'm going to assemble the stretchers to the legs and then put those in place in those dovetails, and then we'll apply clamps.

Alright.

There we go.

Now I'm going to go ahead and let this dry overnight before it's ready for Phil to put the insides in.

Logan's right -- After the frenzy of his glue up, we do want to leave a little bit of time here for the glue to set up, and leave everything in clamps before I get started on my section of this table project.

However, while it's in the clamps, there are a few things that we can still do in the meantime, and those are to clean up some of the character marks that are on this walnut.

As you'll notice, on this side, we have a couple of knots that are leaving voids in the surface.

Now, sometimes that works out okay.

Most of the time, though, we want to disguise them as much as we can.

You've probably heard of the old trick of using a little bit of sawdust and some glue to create your own filler.

That works really well, but I'm going to throw a little variant on that.

Instead of sawdust, we're going to use coffee grounds, and then for the glue we're going to use instant glue.

It'll speed up the whole project.

The color of the coffee grounds blends in really well with this walnut.

Now on this one knot where it's on the edge, I put a piece of masking tape to create a little bit of a dam.

I can fill that void with the coffee grounds.

Pack it in there good and tight.

Same thing with that surface crack as well.

Then a few drops of instant glue right down in there.

On the other end of the table, where the two layers of the table frame were glued together, somewhere in that process we had some wood movement, and there's a hairline gap right at that seam.

Not a big deal.

It's not a structural flaw.

But it's one of those things that woodworkers notice.

It's too small of a gap to get coffee grounds in there.

So the solution here is to use a tinted or a colored instant glue.

So I'm going to run a thin bead along that hairline.

Now what you can do is hit it with a couple of spritzes of an accelerator which will cure the glue much faster.

Or you can just leave it.

It'll just be a few minutes.

Then to clean things up, I'm going to come back with a card scraper and a sanding block to smooth everything out.

And you'll see that both of these approaches will give you nice-looking results.

My portion on this project is to turn the table frame and base that you see here into a multi-purpose table.

And the first part of that is to add the recessed game-playing table on there.

So in order to prep the base for that, what I've done is attached some plywood spacers on top of the leg assemblies that Logan installed a little bit earlier.

They can just go on with glue and some nails just to hold everything in place.

In between those, I want to support the playing surface so it doesn't sag, and that's the job of a pair of cleats that are on either side here.

What you want when you're installing those is to make sure that the upper surface of this cleat is flush with the spacers on the legs.

To do that, I clamped a straight edge across here.

I marked some center lines and then attached the cleats with glue, a little bead of glue on there, and then a few brad nails to hold everything in place.

And then it's kind of belt-and-suspenders just to keep everything set.

For the playing surface itself, it's a piece of MDF that's cut to fit the opening here, and you might want to make sure when you cut that to double check the measurements of your existing glued up frame, rather than going strictly by the numbers on the plans.

For the playing surface, I used some spray adhesive, sprayed a good heavy coat all the way across the top, and then with some help, laid down a piece of felt and rubbed that down flat.

So now I can drop that into place.

There are a couple more parts to add now that the playing surface is in place, and it's these two long hardwood strips here.

They're going to help support the playing surface from above, but they're also going to hold up the dining surface that I'll be making in just a little bit.

I want to get double duty out of these though.

And what I'm going to do is to use a thin kerf blade here in the table saw, and cut a groove along the top edge of these two pieces.

What that does is create a slot for the players while they're playing their games, to have game cards and other items stuck into those so you're not holding on to them.

So the panels are made up of an MDF core, and then I made strips of walnut and I glued the long edges on first.

Once the glue was dry there, you can trim that flush and then you'll glue on end pieces that overlap the long edges.

Now in the plans, they used miter joints at each of the corners.

And if you really want to do that, you can.

But for this kind of application, I just didn't really want to fight with the miters.

And just having the square corners like this is going to work out just fine.

What we're going to do now is this is not attractive as a meal surface as you might think.

So we're going to cover it with some walnut veneer.

Now the veneer that we have is real straight grain.

So that each of these four panels are going to look pretty consistent.

The veneer we're using has a paper backing on it which adds a little bit of strength to it.

The other thing that the paper backing does is to keep the veneer flat as you store it.

So to apply it, I'm going to use a special veneer glue.

It's kind of like wood glue, but it has extra fillers in it and it's tinted to match the color of the veneer a little bit.

and then we'll create a nice solid bond.

Write your name whatever.

And then we want to get a nice smooth coat.

So I have a -- just a foam roller to begin to roll out the glue, making sure we have good coverage right all the way to the edges, and avoid any big puddles anywhere in the panel.

That's what your film of glue should look like.

An even coat all the way across, not too goopy.

Now if you're a "pat your head, rub your belly" kind of person, at the same time, you can do both faces, but I'm just doing one face at a time.

So I can take the panel now, and I'm going to set it on top of a plywood backer... position the veneer over the top.

And you'll see that I have -- The veneer is oversized in all directions, so I don't have to try and nail this exactly.

Rub it down a little bit.

And then set another plywood panel over the top of it.

The next stage is to grab as many clamps as you possibly have, and start applying clamps all the way around.

If you have some deep reach clamps, that's great to be able to get pressure into the middle.

You could use clamping cauls.

You can even use a gym weights if you have those around the house.

Just anything that will help apply pressure into the middle of the panel.

We have one of those big shop made clamps that Chris made a few seasons ago.

So I'm going to put that one on there too, because hey, it's fun.

The design of this game table incorporates several accessories that you can build that fit into the grooves that Chris routed around the outside edge of the aprons.

I'm going to build one of them.

The plans have the details that you need for several other ones.

This one is the largest of them.

It'll have two recesses, one kind of a rectangular one, and then a round one here, just a little shallow recess.

It's a place to put game pieces or dice.

Maybe even a little handful of snacks that you want to hold on to while you're playing the game.

To make the rectangular recess, I'm going to use one of my favorite techniques for creating a really quick and easy template.

It involves just having some strips of plywood just from the scrap bin, and I'm going to attach those with double sided tape right on the edges of the layout lines that I have here.

As the pieces go on, I'm going to put them around in a pinwheel fashion, so the specific length of the pieces doesn't really matter.

Now I'm going to use a small router here with a core box bit that has a bearing on it.

The bearing will follow around as I trace the perimeter of the recess, and then I'll make a series of back and forth passes across the open area to remove all of that waste.

It's a relatively small bit, so you're going to want to make a few passes going on there to get as smooth a surface as possible.

Once that's done, I'm going to replace the pinwheel template with one that has a hole drilled in it, where I will create the round recess.

Process here is the same.

Trace around the outside and then make back and forth passes across the middle.

We're down to the closing moves on our game table.

We'll start with what we need to do to wrap up the veneered panels that create the dining surface.

Once the glue dries on the veneer, I took the panel over to the router table with a flush trim bit installed.

Then I could trim away all the overhanging veneer that was on that panel on all four edges.

At the table saw, just did a little trim work in order to be able to get all four of these panels to drop into place.

Now, one thing that you want to do that's a little bit of a deviation from the plans is wait to cut the supports on the inside of the table until you have the veneered panels complete.

That way you know the thickness of the panels, because what you want to end up with up here is that the surface of these panels is more or less flush with the surface of the rim on the game table.

Then what I did is hit the edges of the panels with some sandpaper, just to break that sharp edge and prevent them from chipping out.

A coat of oil, you can see, really brings out those chocolatey brown colors that we love so much about walnut.

When it comes to the accessories, you can see how it fits into the grooves on the long edges and even on the ends of the table.

They are secured with just hex bolts and some knobs.

You can make as many of these as you want.

Like I said, there are other designs available on the plans.

And that wraps up our project.

There's a lot of woodworking here, but I think what the fun part is, is deciding what you're going to use this particular game table for, whether it's a rousing game of Candyland or Sorry, I'll leave that up to you, but if you want the plans, they're at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There you'll find a wide variety of other woodworking plans, woodworking tips, techniques to help you become a better woodworker.

And what comes next?

Well, that's your move.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

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Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... ...Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by...

Here at Grizzly, woodworking isn't just our business, it's our passion.

We love what we do.

Thank you for the opportunity to support "Woodsmith Shop" TV.