A broken coffee table I built in highschool (exactly 20 years ago this year !!). Every join gave up the ghost to kids dancing on top of it. Dowel glue joins are great, but they just can't withstand the awesome might of 3yr olds dancing.
The original 9mm dowel joins were destroyed, so I had to bore them out and plug them with larger 20mm dowel
The top was initially screwed on with 4 wood screws, sunken through the entire width of this crosspiece.
Deep sunken holes for screws is not ideal. I'm not going to use these again. I'll use brackets or something instead.
Sash clamps to the rescue. You can see the pine strip I placed on the inside upper edge to screw the top onto. Much beefier. It'll get stain to make it invisible of course.
Dowels. Not my first choice of timber joinery...but invisible is the intention I guess.
Taking shape. More clamp action.
Hopefully I get another 20 years out of it. It has some deep dints and marks in the top from previous use, nicely sealed under the new coat of varnish. Looks pretty good. (can't really tell from this shot though) Junk on the top for scale reference.
A broken coffee table I built in highschool (exactly 20 years ago this year !!). Every join gave up the ghost to kids dancing on top of it. Dowel glue joins are great, but they just can't withstand the awesome might of 3yr olds dancing.
The original 9mm dowel joins were destroyed, so I had to bore them out and plug them with larger 20mm dowel
The top was initially screwed on with 4 wood screws, sunken through the entire width of this crosspiece.
Deep sunken holes for screws is not ideal. I'm not going to use these again. I'll use brackets or something instead.
Sash clamps to the rescue. You can see the pine strip I placed on the inside upper edge to screw the top onto. Much beefier. It'll get stain to make it invisible of course.
Dowels. Not my first choice of timber joinery...but invisible is the intention I guess.
Taking shape. More clamp action.
Hopefully I get another 20 years out of it. It has some deep dints and marks in the top from previous use, nicely sealed under the new coat of varnish. Looks pretty good. (can't really tell from this shot though) Junk on the top for scale reference.
