A quick summary on how the kitchen table was made:
This was a breadboard-style farmhouse long table. These are frequently built much longer that this particular table was, but the customer had a limited-sized dining room and only needed to seat 6 people. These tables also do not typically permit for seating room at the ends of the table because of the placement of the legs and supports. I compromised on that by adjusting where the legs were placed just enough to allow leg room at the ends of the table, as well as space for 2 people on each of the sides.
What a traditional farmhouse table and breadboard top looks like:
Most farmhouse designs come with benches, which I did design some to go with this build. However the customer decided they wanted to use chairs instead.
Like all my designs, it starts in a 3D program. A lot of initial renderings get sent to the customer first and they tweak the design with any changes they want before I start building it.
I always start with the tabletop, that way I can have all the glue between boards drying for 24 hours while I work on other things. I used 2x8 boards for this tabletop and trimmed the edges down to a smaller width with my circular saw and straight jig. This made the edges straight and made for a nice fit once they were all glued together.
Once the glue was dry, I spent a solid half day getting the surface of the table flat using a hand plain. The boards in rough form are not straight at all and you can easily feel surface variations when you run your hand across it. I used a level up and down the tabletop to make sure it was flat and had no gaps between level and wood.
After the tabletop flattening was complete, it was time to work on the breadboard ends. This started with trimming the excess wood off to create the tenons (I used a router for this). Sections of the tenon were clearly outlined in pencil so I'd know what additional areas needed to be removed.
After the excess wood between the tenons was removed:
After some fine-tuning and clean-up of the tenons, it was on to the breadboard. It took considerable time to chisel out the mortise slots in the breadboard as this was all done using hand tools (and this was done on each side of the table). The middle mortise is meant to be a snug fit as it is what "anchors" the breadboard to the tabletop. The rest of the breadboard mortises are intentionally left slightly oversized to give the tabletop room to expand and contract with humidity changes. Otherwise the table would tear itself apart and form cracks after awhile!
After the breadboards were done, they were attached to the table ends. They were a bit too tight at first so I spent a few hours shaving off some extra material on the tenons to make for a better fit. Once attached I used strap clamps to pull the table ends tightly together.
This brought me to the dowel pins. The purpose of these pins is often decorative, but they also serve the important purpose of keeping the breadboards pulled tightly against the tabletop. Because the breadboard itself is not actually glued to the table (to permit the wood pieces to move freely with humidity changes), there still needs to be a mechanical stop to prevent the breadboard from coming loose from the table. These dowel pins go through pre-drilled holes in both the breadboard and tenons inside. The holes in the tenons are cut slightly oval-shaped so that the tabletop can move from side-to-side, but not front-to-back.
Example:
Dowel pins are then tapped in with a mallet with a dot of glue at the tops and bottoms.
Once the glue dried, I used a flush-trim saw to cut the dowels completely flat with the tabletop.
In between glue-ups and dry time with the tabletop I had been working on the table base, which was relatively simple to make (although still rather time-consuming... entire project still took about a week). Once the tabletop drying was done, I set it on top of the base and continued to do some flattening and fine-tuning to make sure it would sit flush before attaching.
Here it is once I attached the tabletop using figure-8 fasteners. I did many hours of sanding to the top at this point, as well as rounding the edges.
Which eventually led to the final result!
