(upbeat banjo music plays) - Greetings.

Today it's all about making a beautiful display table.

Some folks call 'em river tables.

I just call 'em beautiful.

So stick around.

We're gonna show you all the tips on making them today.

- [Announcer] The American Woodshop with Scott Phillips is brought to you by - Woodcraft since 1928, providing traditional and modern woodworking tools and supplies to generations of craftsmen.

Woodcraft, helping you make wood, work.

(classical music) (dramatic music) - Pro tools for tool pros.

(dramatic music) Rikon Tools.

- Woodcraft magazine, projects, plans and web links designed to help you make wood, work.

- PS Wood, home of Timber Wolf Swedish Silicon steel bandsaw blades, and super-sharp scroll saw blades.

- A bed to sleep on, a table to share meals, a house that feels like a home.

The Furniture Bank of Central Ohio providing furniture to neighbors in need.

- Now, before I build a one of a kind display table actually two, it all starts with the wood.

Okay, where do you find the wood for these grand creations?

Well, behind me, look at this pallet and Dave Moser of Urban Timber Mill, off to see where these came from.

(bandmill humming) Woo hoo!

(bandmill humming) It's payday!

The corkscrew willow is coming to life, thanks to Dave Moser.

Now, do you pay extra for the ants?

- I don't.

I don't.

I give those away.

You can take those with you.

Can you imagine that filled with epoxy resin?

- I can.

I can.

That, that would be, that would be nice.

You gotta kind of glue that on a little bit.

You don't want that splitting off.

- No, glue it on?

I'm gonna fill that with epoxy.

I'm gonna put a light strip in there.

- Yeah.

We're getting into some spalting here.

- Oh yeah.

Oh, you pay extra for that too.

- I pay extra for that.

No, actually you pay extra.

- Well, no, I'm gonna sell it to you because I know you want it.

And we're getting into some reds now?

And we're getting into some reds now?

This is beautiful.

Now spalting is just when wood has started to decay.

This is spectacular.

All those ant chambers in there.

Now, Dave Moser of Urban Timber Mill right here in Troy, Ohio.

You will "have log will travel," right?

- That's right.

- Okay.- You can bring 'em to me or I will go to you.

- And he has a kiln.

And earlier the season, you saw a segment on kiln drying.

And now Dave, here's the question for you.

You milled this log that I planted 15 years ago.

And what do you think of it?

- It's an ugly log.

- [Scott] Yes?

- But it's making really nice lumber.

- Okay.

So this right here is gonna become the display table that I'm gonna make on the show.

But I'm curious.

Everybody's got a different passion.

Look around here at these slabs.

Do you see one that's better than this?

- Well, I like that one and I think that one would be my second choice.

- Okay.

This one right here?

- Although, although that that's close.

- That is cool.

- That is cool.

- I'm gonna cure these out with pentacryl and then you're gonna cure some in your kiln as well.

-I can do that.

-Because I can't wait.

I'm gonna jump on it.

I can't thank you enough.

And I'll let you get back to it.

I'll carry away my boards.

Dave Moser, you're one in a million.

- All right.

Thank you, Scott.

- Thank you.

- It's always a pleasure - Dave, my hat's off to you.

Couldn't have done this without you.

So here's how this cleaned up, and I'll show you how this is done in just a second, but this is going to have hairpin metal legs on it.

But this piece is the casting, the river casting.

And first off, before you pour anything on this make sure it's level, because if it's not all the resins will drift to one end and you'll be in misery.

And don't use a dinky little level like that.

Use a long one so you know where stand.

And the other thing you, look at the color of this.

This is all flowing together.

This bark inclusion is the river down to this solid cast corner.

Wait till you see this we have to take it outside to do some prep, work on it.

But you see these colors?

What you do is you start with one part resin and a half part the curing agent.

Okay, this is a, the resin.

And then this sets it.

And you use a mixing bucket to make sure that two to one ratio is done.

And then over the course of a week I poured this in different pours.

I did seven different pours to get to this point right now.

But in each one I used three drops of dye for a quart of resin.

And then this powder, this is an aluminum powder.

Don't breathe this.

It's a dust that you throw in to get the river life, to make it really come together.

So let's take these outside and get to work.

(sander whirs) So today we're going to do two tables one live edge with Arm-R-Seal on it, and then this one with the resin that you saw earlier.

Okay, so a couple tips.

Whatever you, do before you start casting this in resin, take high grade silicone.

And in the very bottom of the pour, seal off every little cavity, because if you don't when you pour the very expensive resins they'll just bleed all the way through to the bottom.

So, but you do have to let that silicone cure overnight.

Then you end up with this beautiful form and I've sanded all the way through 2000 grit to get this beautiful finish.

So this is done.

All I have to do is clean up the edges.

And then on this one, the other thing that I'll do I use a wide four by 24 belt sander with 80 grit on it.

And then 100 grit on the random orbital sander and always outside because I don't like to eat saw dust and mess up my shop.

So I'll get this plugged in, a bit more sanding on this, clean it off, and we'll get this edge all cleaned up with the random orbital.

And then we'll get on to finishing.

(orbital sander hums) You're looking at the bottom of the live edge slab.

Moisture content on this is right around 9%.

And these are hairpin legs, three of them.

Now here's how she goes up and down and rock solid.

The beauty of three legs is it'll never rock no matter how warped that top gets.

But let's check the moisture content right now.

Ideally, I want it around eight percent.

Let's see where we're at.

Right now it's reading right around 12, no 10, right at 10.

And this is dried through and through.

And I treated this with pentacryl so that this Arm-R-Seal satin when it soaks in all the way around, will stabilize it.

So take a look at this burl.

This is where we're gonna start right here.

And the right there, look at that grain just explode!

Oh man.

I love that look.

And to think that this came from our yard tree that was hit by lightning and we were able to salvage it with a help of Rob Crump and his tree crew that came to harvest this and then Dave Moser to slab it up.

And the beautiful thing about Arm-R-Seal is it was really does soak into the wood and I can brush out the bark edge and I'll get this done.

Let this dry.

Remember all the way around.

Oh boy, that spalting right here.

Oh, that's just grand.

That's when the wood starts to decay, we got this just in time.

The ants and the decay really was starting to go crazy.

So I'll get this all brushed out.

And some people go, well, you can't finish outside.

I do all the time because the ventilation is so good.

But if a bug were to land on this, let it be.

And then once this cures knock it off.

That's the solution.

Ideal finishing temperature is around 70 to 80 degrees, humidity between 40 and 60%.

I'm loving every bit of that.

Every bit of that.

So I'll get this done then on inside and we'll work on that river casting and build some very unusual legs for it.

It's called the castle joint legs.

What we're going to do is plane down all the boards we need to a one inch thickness.

And also since these blanks are already square I can run it through the planer and get those square which is what we're going to do.

But whatever you do when you're using power tools any tools in your shop, work safely.

Be sure to read understand and follow all the instructions that come with the tools and products you use.

Let's plane this down with a helical head planer.

One inch thick and then from there, we'll plane these legs.

(planer whirs) (planer whirs) Now, that's a beautiful leg work piece and we'll cut this to length at the band saw and create this joint that's called a castle joint, more on that later.

But before we go any further to do that, the display table needs something to display.

Suzy's on it.

Let's go take a look.

Suzy, I absolutely love this.

Where'd you come up with this idea?

- Isn't that fun?

Well, my sister came up with it and she had seen it somewhere.

I don't know.

And wanted one for the boys for their birthdays.

I mean, how fun is that?

A big birthday centerpiece.

- Hey guys, try to blow all these candles out in one breath.

- Yeah, they may need a little help do it.

- They can do it.

Okay.

- But it's really easy to make you just get a nice thick piece of wood, long piece of wood.

You can buy a post, you know if you don't have a nice piece of cherry like we did.

And - And I planed this down it's almost two and three quarters thick.

- Yeah.

- And it's a little over four and a half wide and finished with Arm-R-Seal.

But look at these metal cups.

These go in for safety.

And the hole has to be just the right size, which is 15/16.

- Right.

- And you have the Forstner bit for that.

- Right.

- Now, describe how you laid out the pattern.

- Well, we have this peg board that's one inch on center.

So it was really the perfect way to lay out my pattern.

Just lay it on there.

Use a permanent marker and get all your holes marked.

So it makes it simple and easy.

Takes all the guesswork out of it.

- And then this plywood table is clamped onto this back fence.

Just a right angle with a piece of wood there.

She butts that work piece up against that.

And that always centers up her holes for the outside edges.

She can it reverse it.

And then we unclamp it to the center holes, drill those.

And then she'll show us the final reveal.

So get to it.

- All right.

I'm gonna clamp it down.

And if you'll get the dust collection once I get going, start drilling some holes.

All right.

Got that one drilled.

Wait, till that comes to a stop.

I'm gonna, unclamp it.

Get the second one placed right there.

It's lined up, clamp it and off we go and drill more, drill the rest of the holes.

(soft whirring sounds) - All right.

This is where quality control comes in.

That's me.

And let's push this one out of the way.

- Yeah.- And bring this up, get all the shavings out.

That's good.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- There.

- How's the fit?

- Perfect.

- How about that?

- Just perfect.

- And she has a depth stop on the collar of the drill press and that goes down 15/16 and then the candles, you just mix those up.

- Yeah.

- And again, the reason you use metal cups it's decorative but it's also for safety.

If those candles burn all the way down.

- Right.- Cause this is an heirloom this candelabra is gonna be around - I'm going to need some more of the candle cups.

Okay.

But there you get it.

And so you'll see this one, the finished one, all lit up at the end of the show on the display table.

- Yeah.

- I love this project.

- I do too.

It's fun, easy to make, I mean.

- Okay, - Do it.

- Well get to a couple more then.

- Okay.

- See ya.

- See ya.

- All right, Let's make some legs.

So here's the layout on these three and a half inch square 31 inch long work pieces.

Use a white marker left and right.

Four and a quarter down.

This blade is one inch thick.

That's why the aprons will fit in because they're planed to one inch thickness and I've already made cuts straight down leaving the line and that's key.

Otherwise it's not gonna fit properly.

You need a tight fit.

So I'll fire it up.

Notch this out, rotate it 90 degrees, notch the other side.

And once I get those cut out, I need three of those, I'll cut the apron and work pieces at a 14 degree angle.

And then I'll cut those notches out.

And once that's done, we can put everything together.

(bandsaw whirring) Now this is the moment everything comes together because this river table deserves something unique a leg assembly, unlike any other.

So I'm taking the castle joint that we've seen cut out at the band saw, milled to perfection.

Now watch here's the bigger of the three posts.

And the first thing I want do is slide in this piece right here, and this notch needs to be up.

So when I bring in this mating piece it goes to the back rail, It locks this support piece in.

Now the thing is you want it to be a tight fit.

So that's why we take time when we make those cuts at the bandsaw to leave that line, like I told you.

Now we leave that be, we bring this brace forward and this already has a pre-drilled hole all the way through.

That's been counter sunk.

You'll see why that's important in just a second.

And I want, because of the width of this, I want this short 14 degree bevel cut or miter cut, excuse me, to the back and the larger overhanging part forward for stability.

Then this piece when that gets rotated around needs to be nice and wide.

So that goes like that.

And of course that also has the pre-drilled hole here all the way through because to use the construction fasteners to make this all solid everything has to be pre-drilled and then what we can do and I know this seems strange is this back piece now that is the back rail, locks in left and right in the castle joint, like so, kind of like Lincoln logs.

And this joint has been around for centuries and it's rock solid and we bring that forward.

And now what we can do again, this is pre-drilled.

I'm going to drill a few more and these notches lock in just like that.

Nice tight fit.

Better bring that post up because as tight as that is I don't want to break anything.

I'll line that up, bring that back.

And voila, there's a leg assembly.

Now it moves a bit but where did this type of joint come from?

It came from China, the Imperial Palace.

And those columns have withstood centuries of earthquakes.

So now I'm going to bring these forward in those pre-drilled holes.

And these have been counterbored so that we can drive those heads down deep enough that the slab won't be impacted.

I need that bit right there.

Oh boy.

To open up that hole just a bit so that I do not split out the wood.

And this is when pre-drilling wood, in Walnut in this case, saves you a ton of misery down the road.

When you go to drive these you need the right size pilot hole.

Here we go.

(drilling) And that's got a clutch on it and it's self ejecting.

How about that?

(Scott laughs) Now that's solid.

And that one's been pre-drilled so we're good to go.

On all three legs I drive those long connectors.

Where'd it go, right there.

Here we go.

Draw this tight.

(drilling) Now it's very important in Osage Orange like this column right here to make sure you're using the right size fastener, because it's so dense.

So very hard that it could split out and crack cuz it's kind of like a rock but that's a rare piece of wood.

I like that.

I like the contrast for this river table.

It will draw everything together.

Now here's a construction fastener there.

There's one that comes up on the backside here, that gets driven right there through the pre-drilled hole.

And there's one here.

And so now this is a moment of truth.

The artistic moment when I swing the slab around and this is ready to go.

Cause when these come to the bottom of the table it will make it very solid.

So clearing the deck.

Don't want anything in the way.

Here we go.

The moment of truth.

This is the front edge right here.

Okay.

Gotta push the bench dogs down right there and there and away we go like so, like this.

And if the patterns are right, I need to bring that forward.

I don't want this sticking out.

I need to bring that forward like that.

And that looks really good right there.

It's balanced.

This end has to come back here because what will make this all rigid is those fasteners underneath and that's perfect right there.

So it gives it the light airy feeling and this edge dripping off like that.

It's awesome.

So I'll drive the fasteners from below.

I'll start on this front edge right here, where you can see it and draw it all tight.

(drilling) That's home.

Same all the way around.

(drilling) Drill the holes oversize so it allows the wood to expand and contract.

Everything's secured.

Inside I have the silicone pads down, so no harm, no foul.

And the best leg is forward.

Meaning look at that grain and that stripe and that right there is why I work with wood.

Because it definitely rewards you for your efforts.

I mean, that's glorious right there.

And I like that castle joint assembly.

It makes everything nice and solid and it looks so cool.

Very elegant.

I like that.

Now look over here.

This is the Osage Orange.

Why do they call it Osage Orange?

Look at this because in time it really does get orange.

Look at that.

That's just beautiful, straight grain.

It's rare wood to come by.

Guy named Roland Poppy and I used to work the woods together for Heart Soul Veneer years ago, God rest your soul.

But he had a saw mill and this came from that saw mill.

So that means a lot to me.

So I'll finish this out and then Suzy will show you why this is called a display table.

Lights, camera and action.

When life throws you a curve ball, what do you do?

You swing away.

And when the tree got hit by lightning that became this river table.

We had no idea when we harvested it.

- No, no.

- Okay, and a lot of good friends helped us bring this into being.

So my hats off to each and every one of them.

- Yeah.

- For enriching my life.

- Love the table.

That's really cool.

- And the candelabra.

- Yeah.

- Wow!

- It's fun.

Should we blow it out?

- Why don't you try?

- Ready?

Give me a count.

- Okay.

- Hey, by the way, thanks for joining us.

This is a wrap for season 29 in The American Woodshop.

And season 30 is around the bend.

Yes, that's right.

We're working on it.

So thank you for all the years of support.

Whatever you do, the one challenge from us to you is whatever you do in your shop, make it your own and just create away and make beautiful things for the ones you love.

See ya.

Okay.

- See ya.

Ready?

Go.

-Yeah!

-Team work!

(both laughing) - Woodcraft since 1928, providing traditional and modern woodworking tools and supplies to generations of craftsmen.

Woodcraft, helping you make wood work (classical music) (dramatic music) - Pro tools for tool pros, (dramatic music) Rikon tools.

- Woodcraft magazine- projects, plans, and web links designed to help you make wood work.

- PS Wood home of Timber Wolf Swedish Silicon Steel bandsaw blades and super sharp scroll saw blades.

- A bed to sleep on, a table to share meals, a house that feels like a home.

The Furniture Bank of Central Ohio, providing furniture to neighbors in need.

- For more information on tips behind The American Woodshop and watch free episodes, 24 seven, check us out online and like us on Facebook.

(upbeat music plays)