This piece of furniture is one of the most versatile in use. The table can be a dining room, a utility table, or installed in a living room, on a veranda, on a property, in a workshop, and so on. In a word, it is impossible to do without it. But many people are not satisfied with purchased products due to a number of parameters - size, design features, shape, or for other reasons.
Considering that wood is relatively easy to cut and sand, making a table from it according to your own drawing, with your own hands, is not a problem for a good owner. And it will come out much cheaper. Plus - satisfaction from such work.
Room
Ideally, this is an extension, a barn, an empty garage, although a small area under a canopy will do. Working with wood on the site, in the open air, means being completely dependent on the vagaries of the weather. If there are “square meters” suitable for making furniture, then you should worry about quality ventilation in advance. Natural is sometimes not enough (besides, it depends on changes in wind direction and pressure), and a hood is installed.
Arguments that if you use protective equipment, you can work in a closed space do not stand up to criticism. Wood dust will immediately settle on everything, including the sample with which some action is being performed. Neither precise cutting along the line, nor high-quality surface treatment of wood (not to mention impregnation and finishing coating paint and varnish composition) cannot be obtained.
One cannot ignore the fact that many preparations used for wood processing contain toxic components. For example, varnishes, paints, impregnations: if they are not natural, then harmful fumes are guaranteed.
Tools
Their set depends on the extent to which it is planned to “ennoble” a simple wood structure, what shape it will be given, and a number of other nuances. If the master does not lay claim to the elegance of a wooden table and does not aim to achieve its originality, then an ordinary carpenter’s set will be enough.
For more “fine” work in the process of making a table of unusual shapes and external design, you will need special devices.
El/jig saw. It will not be possible to make an inclined vertical cut with a regular saw, maintaining the angle exactly. The canvas will begin to “play”, and therefore the quality of work will be extremely low. An electric jigsaw is universal in use and also provides high precision cutting of wood or cuts in it.
Many of the listed devices can be rented if making furniture is not a hobby, but a necessity.
Impregnating and other compositions
Rot protection:
- Recycling machine oil is an effective, and also free, remedy. But not for dining tables.
- Flaxseed oil. A natural and effective product that penetrates deeply into the wood structure and protects it from mold and mildew. The downside is the high cost. But if the table is intended for eating, this is a great option. The drug has no color, therefore, after processing lumber, it does not leave any traces in the form of darkening, stains, or streaks, unlike processing.
- Water-polymer emulsion. It is characterized by long-lasting action and safety for health.
- Acrylic varnishes. They have practically supplanted their predecessors in the “NC” category, since they are harmless and in many respects better than compounds that are diluted with solvents.
- PVA, bone glue and a number of others. More detailed information about carpentry compositions - .
To decorate a tree:
- Clear varnishes are used not only to protect the material from moisture. With their help, you can preserve the texture of the wood and shade it.
- Stains.
- Varnishes with a coloring effect (tinting).
- Paints (but only for wood!).
- Putties.
Using colorless varnish and pigments, you can make a coloring composition of any shade. It is enough just to correctly determine the proportion of components. This is easy to do by experimenting with mixing and applying a sample to a discarded board. This will allow you to choose an acceptable tone. It is more than advisable, since it is not always possible to purchase exactly what you need on the market.
Fasteners
It is better to ignore all advice on assembling a wooden table using nails (the reasoning is simple, quick and cheap). The reasons are as follows:
- The nail easily pricks dry wood (and this is exactly what is used; more on that below).
- It is quite difficult to direct its leg correctly (strictly vertically). In some cases, it is even more difficult to redo your mistake.
- A tree, even the most protected from rot, succumbs to it over time. The maintainability of a table knocked down with nails is extremely low. Practice shows that it is rarely possible to remove such fasteners without damaging adjacent structural parts. As a result, instead of the planned replacement of one element, 2–3 will have to be changed.
- When assembling a wooden table, if glue alone is not enough, you should use only self-tapping screws.
- Sometimes its individual parts (at joints) require reinforcement. Strengthening the strength with hardware with a thicker and longer leg is impractical. The reason is the same - the likelihood of the tree splitting. For these purposes, metal strips, brackets, and corners are used.
Features of choosing wood
Some people focus on the cost of lumber, others care about the wood’s resistance to rot, and for others, its texture. What can you recommend to a novice furniture maker? Do not use the same type of wood for a table unless it is intended to be installed somewhere in a utility room or garage. This is exactly what many novice “craftsmen” do, selecting the same type of boards and bars from what is left from construction or renovation and gathering dust in the barn.
When making a wooden table for a living space, veranda, etc., you need to take into account the properties of individual species. Naturally, if you do not have sufficient experience in assembling furniture, you should pay attention to more cheap wood. The first table (chair, stool) in your life is just a kind of training in making and gaining experience.
Tabletop. Here, strength and minimal moisture absorption come first. It is on this part of the table that something constantly spills. The optimal choice is pine, larch, oak (although the latter is more expensive). Thickness – at least 3 cm.If the size of the countertop is small, then you can use wood-based slab products (OSV, OSV and the like). But only with lamination to prevent the material from swelling when liquid gets on the table surface. For example, chipboard.
Low-grade lumber is not used in the furniture industry. This is not economically feasible, since pre-treatment of wood increases the production cycle time. But when making something, wood of lower grades, substandard wood is just right. The same pallets left over after using stacks of foam blocks or bricks.
And not just because it is free or relatively cheap. Many of the disadvantages of such wood can be turned into advantages with the right approach. For example, after coating with colorless varnish, the tabletop acquires a unique, original look.
The main thing is that the boards do not have obvious defects in the form of rot, cracks, falling knots and wormholes.
If pine is chosen for the countertop (this also applies to many other coniferous species), then you need to pay attention to the location of the annual rings. These arches are called humps. The cuts of the boards show how they are oriented, and this is taken into account when laying them in a row. Samples obtained by tangential cutting are arranged alternatingly (one top down, the next one up); radial cutting - the same (with arcs in the same direction). The nuance is insignificant, but compliance with this recommendation eliminates the risk of warping and splitting of the boards.
For furniture, if you think about its durability, you should take only dry lumber. As wood shrinks, it will become deformed; This is a natural process, and its consequences in the form of twisting, warping, and bending are inevitable. Such a table will quickly become warped, and you will have to repair it. And here you need to decide whether to purchase highly dry wood or rid it of moisture yourself. The first option is simpler, but such a tree is more expensive. The second one will cost less, but there are a number of purely technical difficulties.
- Firstly, it is necessary to ensure a stable temperature regime in the place where the workpieces are stored. Changes in its value will lead to uneven evaporation of moisture, which will negatively affect the strength of the tree.
- Secondly, good ventilation must be organized.
- Thirdly, and perhaps this is the most unpleasant moment - you will have to wait up to about six months, depending on the initial moisture content of the tree. But this is not a guarantee that the result will be as expected; Even this requires practice.
This once again confirms the idea that when starting to make furniture from wood for the first time, you should focus on the simplest table for household needs made of cheap lumber, without pretensions to its sophistication and originality of design. For example, for a barn, garage and the like.
Options and patterns of wooden tables
It should immediately be noted that any work related to design and self-assembly is a creative process. There are no stereotypes in this matter, so you can only take the model you like as a basis, and everything else - linear parameters, shape, manufacturing specifics - depends on the purpose of the product and your own imagination. Here are just a few examples of what wooden tables can be like. For example, for summer cottages For small utility rooms, you should choose structures whose geometry can be easily changed - folding, camping, hanging, garden, level, and so on.
Tables that are intended to be used for eating, playing, or as coffee tables for installation in living rooms for their intended purpose are made stationary, that is, of unchangeable dimensions. These assemblies are more “solid”, since all articulated parts are rigidly fixed; no hinge joints.
Features of assembling wooden tables
If a person undertakes to make something, it means that he knows how to use tools, read blueprints and work with lumber. Such a home craftsman does not need to be taught the basics of carpentry. But it would be worth noting a number of nuances when making a wooden table. These notes will only help in the process.
Let's start with the types of connections. There are quite a few of them, but for a table that you assemble with your own hands, the ones listed below are quite enough.
On the dowels
In this case, the parts are fastened by placing them on an adhesive composition (Fig. 1 – 3).
The nuance is that to make the “cylinders” that are inserted into pre-drilled “channels”, a tree of a denser structure than the table elements is taken. This is what ensures the strength of the connections. Before installing them, chamfers are removed from the edges of the dowels and holes.
These round sticks are available for sale in any furniture showroom in several sizes. Grind them out, even having carpentry machine- an irrational waste of time. It is not recommended to purchase plastic dowels for the table; they are used for dismountable connections. For example, frame furniture (walls, multi-level shelving, etc.).
You should not use nails to fix table elements (Fig. 4). Metal and wood differ in degree thermal expansion. Such a connection will not last long - it will begin to “shatter”, especially if the table is intended to be installed on the territory or in an unheated room.
On the kings
It is advisable to make such connections if the table either has to be disassembled periodically, or without this it is impossible to move it through the doorway. Although not all drawers require dismantling the structure. The most commonly used options are shown in the figures.
Bolted
Such connections are used mainly for garden furniture or those installed in extensions; for utility tables. An example is shown in the figure.
The nuance of working with fasteners
So that the self-tapping screw can be easily screwed in and “fit” into in the right direction, first, at the point of its installation, a hole is made with a drill slightly smaller in diameter than the fastener leg. The main thing is to maintain the coincidence of the axial lines, that is, to prevent skew. In this case, to “plant” the screw, you can do without a screwdriver.
Features of wood processing
Everyone knows that a plane is used first, an abrasive with a large grain, and then a fine one. But sometimes it turns out that the last stage, grinding has to be done many times. Much depends on the type of wood and the degree of drying. After applying the first layer of varnish, the fibers may “stand up”. Nothing wrong with that. You should wait for the workpiece to dry and repeat its processing with abrasive. The work is painstaking and takes time. But it is precisely this method that can bring “problem” wood to ideal “smoothness.”
To eliminate the risk of injury to a person, all edges and corners of the table should be slightly rounded.
Features of external finishing
- Minor defects in the form of cracks and chips are eliminated with putty.
- Once sanding is complete, all wood dust must be removed. IN in this case an ordinary one will help out household vacuum cleaner with the appropriate nozzle. It is recommended that after such cleaning, wipe the entire table with a slightly damp cloth, let it dry and repeat removing any remaining dust. After this, you can safely start applying stain or varnish - there will be no “pellets” on the wood.
- You can add originality to the table not only with the help of curly cutouts, an unusual shape of the tabletop or legs, a combination of textures of different species, and so on. One of the good options is artistic painting.
And finally. The work of independently making something out of wood (for example, a table) is just the initial stage of mastering the skill of a “designer-assembler”. Having developed technologies and techniques on wood and acquired the necessary skills, it is enough to simply switch to other materials - metal, plastic, glass. So the benefits of a wooden table made even by yourself simple drawing(besides the pleasure of work and the money saved) is obvious - time well spent.
To begin with, a DIY furniture lover should learn how to create a stool, since it is the easiest. And then it’s time to study the issue of creating a table.
Table designs vary, however, the simple version is very similar to the process of creating a stool.
A simple table for use in the country or during a picnic can be assembled in just a few hours. To do this you will need a hacksaw, hammer or drill.
However, a table based on a similar approach can be made for a living space. Because it can ideally replace the current extra-large option purchased from a retail outlet or furniture store.
The process of creating a table yourself is interesting on the other hand, because with its help the author has freedom of creative expression. It can be presented as a noticeable element of the interior of the room.
Creators of handmade amateur furniture are called carpenters for a reason. The usual definitions like: sofa holders or bedside tables, or maybe cabinets, do not apply to them.
Having gained experience in this area, over time it will be possible to create exclusive types of tables with advanced characteristics.
Now let's consider the issue of creating wood-based tables yourself.
Wood is clean and affordable, and is not as difficult to process as other materials. It conveys the maximum energy of the aesthetic filling of the style of the living room.
Due to its properties, it is lenient towards the mistakes of beginners in the field of independent furniture creation. However, thinner versions of the tables will require an advanced level of craftsmanship.
To begin with, having learned to work with wooden things, then it will be easier to use glass, plastic or even metal as a material.
Selection of tools and work space
To independently create tables or other wooden furniture elements, you need to use only non-residential premises.
This is due to the specifics of working with wood. It leads to the formation of large amounts of dust, shavings and other waste.
And the process of tinting or creating protection for a material based on stain can create dangerous emissions into the air. Actually, nitro varnishes can also be dangerous.
Because of this, for a personal carpentry workshop you will have to take care of ventilation of the room. Experts advise creating artificial ventilation of the room.
Many people use a garage for this, however, production waste can pollute or damage the car, so this is not the best option.
Carpentry tools include modern and traditional types
For the most part, to begin with, you can limit yourself to a simple carpentry tool, however, later you may need modern versions in the form of:
- A rotating version of the miter box, which helps to create cuts based on two planes, adhering to the required size.
- This tool will open all your beneficial features, first of all, with bow saw. This pair is considered universal; it can be useful for many jobs.
- Manual version of universal electric jigsaw, featuring a tilting shoe that helps create cuts based on required angle in relation to the vertical plane.
- Disc version of the sander. It will help beginners complete wood surface treatment in about 5-15 minutes. An experienced carpenter and some sandpaper can do the same job in about an hour.
And there is also a regular belt sander for grooves with recessed areas, which is distinguished by a protruding version of the working part.
Such tools are distinguished by their price and narrow specialization of work; experienced craftsmen recommend renting them for a short period.
The best specialists, using various grinding machines, can even create the effect artificial aging wood, however, is a very difficult job for beginners.
Which tree is best?
To create a wooden table, any wood that is moderately resistant to decay is suitable, however, you should refrain from soft versions like: poplar, willow, ailanthus wood, aspen and alder.
Of the domestic types of wood, it is best to use:
- soft options in the form of pine, fir, cedar, horse chestnut, plane tree, juniper or spruce.
- solid in the form of ideal oak, beech, maple, walnut or ash, larch, suitable for many works, as well as fruit species represented by apple, plum, pear, apricot and quince. And also elm and rowan should be included here.
- fairly hard species based on acacia, yew, stone birch, dogwood and boxwood.
Conclusion
I would like to decorate a table and probably all types of furniture created with my own hands with an artistic version of painting, and not with ordinary stripes.
However, over time, the design may deteriorate; to prevent this from happening, it is necessary to rub the paint into the depths of the wood before the varnishing process. This can be done using the technique of glazing. We are talking about layer-by-layer rubbing of the paints used.
Photos of tables with your own hands
The dining table can easily be called the heart of your apartment. You come back to it after a hard day at work, you gather with your whole family for it, you invite friends and family to it on weekends, you set it up for the holidays.
Today, kitchen tables are made of glass, plastic, metal, wood, veneer and even stone. In stores there is a large selection of dining tables for every taste. You can always choose a table from the store’s assortment, but there is another option - try to make a kitchen table from wood with your own hands. In this case, you need to decide on the material. The easiest way to make a kitchen table with your own hands is from wood. The work will be carried out in several stages. 
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Deciding on the shape and size
In order for the product to serve you for a long time and be convenient to use, you need to choose the right size and shape. Speaking of shape, let’s highlight several options for wooden tables:
- rectangular;
- square;
- round;
- oval.
Kitchen table rectangular shape- the most common model that will easily fit into any interior - it can be placed against the wall, or in the center of the kitchen.
Square products are compact. They are chosen for small kitchens. These tables are suitable small families consisting of no more than 4 people.
Round and oval products allow more people to be seated, so this form is in demand in large families. A round or oval table is chosen for large rooms, where it will stand in the center of the room, since placing such a table in a corner or pushing it against the wall will not work.
When choosing the shape of the product, consider the style of the kitchen, the dimensions of the room and the number of family members.
How to make a kitchen table with your own hands and not make a mistake with the size? There are standards for calculating the size of a dining table. The standard is a wooden table that can accommodate 4 people. Each person has a tabletop area of 60x40 cm. With this seating arrangement, people will not interfere with each other.
The size of the kitchen table should be such that there is at least 20 cm² of free space in the center for serving items (dish, vase of flowers, etc.).
Taking into account all the nuances, standard table will be 75 cm in height, 100-120 cm in length and about 80 cm in width.
Required tools and materials
To make a table you will need:
- finished tabletop 60x120 cm or 4 pieces of wood 100 cm each;
- two boards 80 cm long (for the frame);
- two boards 40 cm long (for lintels);
- furniture dowels;
- ready-made table legs 73-75 cm;
- pencil and ruler;
- tape measure and gloves.
Before assembling the dining table for the kitchen, prepare materials and tools: plane, sander or sandpaper, circular saw or jigsaw, drill (with 8 mm drill), wood glue or PVA glue. To finish the table you will need an antiseptic, varnish and stain. Don't forget safety glasses.
What wood to use
What kind of wood are kitchen tables made of? In order for the dining table to last a long time, its surface does not swell or dry out, and is also resistant to various damages, give preference to hard and dense types of wood: beech, walnut, cherry or oak. This wood lends itself well to processing and drying, maintaining its structure. A table made from solid wood of these species will be durable and resistant to damage. It is better to avoid pine, fir, and willow - these types of wood are soft and loose, they will not withstand mechanical stress.
Preparation and processing of wooden parts
Before starting work, you should soak the boards with an antiseptic and let them dry. Parts can be processed at home.
Thoroughly sand the boards and tabletop with a plane or sander. Walk around wooden surface sandpaper. The better you process the wood, the smoother and more pleasant to the touch the surface of the product will be.
Tabletop
If you purchased a ready-made wooden countertop from a store, you can skip this step. If you decide to make the countertop yourself, let's start making it.
You need to prepare 4 boards of the same length - 100 cm each. If the boards have not been pre-sawn, they need to be trimmed in length and width. To prevent the tabletop from swelling and splitting due to exposure to moisture, lay the boards in a pattern facing each other.
The easiest way to assemble a countertop is by joining. The boards need to be connected to each other using glue and furniture dowels. To do this, drill grooves 10-12 mm deep in the bars at a distance of 10-15 cm from each other. If you have chosen thin boards for your future table, make holes 6-8 mm deep.
Sand the surface of the boards thoroughly, paying particular attention to the edges. This way the workpieces will fit closer to each other.
Pour glue into the holes made. Apply glue to the furniture dowels and drive them into the holes, connecting all four pieces one by one. Remaining glue can be removed with sandpaper.
Legs
The next step is to attach the legs. To do this, you will need table legs purchased in advance and two 40 cm boards. The legs will need to be fastened with a jumper board, drilling two holes in it, retreating 1.5 cm from the edge of the leg. Screw screws into the holes made and secure with glue. Connect the boards to the legs by tapping with a hammer. Let the glue dry; to do this, leave the parts for 12 hours.
Tsarga
The next step will be to make a support for the future table, which holds the surface of the tabletop and the four legs together - this structural element, called tsarga. To do this, you will need boards 80 cm long. Attach the frame to the legs in the same way - connecting the parts with screws and glue. Drill holes for the screws that will hold the tabletop. When the frame is completely dry, connect the tabletop to the frame using screws.
A table is the second item after a stool that a novice amateur furniture maker should take on. The design of a simple table is no more complicated than that of a stool; an unpretentious, comfortable table for the country house or for a picnic can be built in half a day using a hacksaw, hammer and drill. But a table made using the same technology and slightly refined can look great at home, on the left in the figure, instead of an expensive one. However, the table also gives greater freedom of creative expression; it can be meaningful and even key element interior design, it is not for nothing that artisanal furniture makers are called carpenters, and not sofa makers, cabinet makers or nightstand makers. Having become proficient in carpentry, it will be possible over time to take on exclusive tables, the rest of the poses. right there.
This article discusses how to make tables from wood. Wood is an environmentally friendly, affordable and easily processed material with remarkable aesthetic advantages. In utilitarian products, it forgives beginners quite serious mistakes, but delicate woodwork requires high skill. Having learned how to make wooden things, it will be much easier to master glass, metal and plastic.
Tool and workshop
To make a table with your own hands, you need something separate from the living rooms. production room: Woodworking is notoriously dusty. In addition, such good means tinting and protecting wood, like stains, emit harmful fumes during the staining process; nitro varnishes too, although to a lesser extent. Therefore, home carpentry should be well ventilated, or better yet, with forced ventilation. You can use the garage, but there will be a lot of sawdust, and it will not be good for the car. Better to work in a barn; if it doesn’t exist yet, then you can build it, and it will be useful for a lot of things on the farm.
An ordinary carpenter's tool, on the left in the figure, will be enough for a start. But the work will go much faster, and the result will be better, if you attract help from modern achievements, on the right there:
- Rotary miter box, pos. 1, allows you to make cuts exactly to size and angle in 2 planes. It is advisable to take it with a complete bow saw, so everything together will be cheaper and the work will be more accurate. A miter box is a universal device, it will always come in handy and it is better to buy it.
- Also universal is a manual jigsaw with a tilting shoe, pos. 2, which allows you to cut at an angle to the vertical plane.
- Disc grinder, pos. 3 and 4, gives a beginner the opportunity in 5-15 minutes to obtain the surface of a wooden surface, which would take an experienced carpenter with sandpaper in hand at least an hour to achieve, and a tape one, pos. 5, also process ends quickly and efficiently; There are also belt sanders for grooves and recesses with a protruding working body. These are already specialized tools, unsuitable for other work, and quite expensive, so it’s better to rent them first. True, craftsmen still successfully brush with grinders, i.e. They artificially age the wood, but this is delicate work.
- It is also preferable at first to rent a manual wood router, pos. 6, with a set of cutters. They process shaped edges and select holes and grooves.
In general, a universal household woodworking machine (UBDS) of various modifications is very useful on the farm. It is compact, fits on the table, power supply – 220 V 50/60 Hz 380-500 W. UBDS combines a circular saw, a jointer, a wood lathe and a set of cutters. True, you can’t just turn the table legs on it; the reach of the tailstock caliper is too small. But the caliper itself is just steel round pipe, it is not difficult to lengthen it. The cutter stop remains standard, it is movable, the leg and the long support are sharpened in one setting.
How to choose a tree?
A wooden table can be made from any wood of average resistance to decay, except for the softest species: poplar, aspen, alder, willow, ailanthus. Domestic ones include:
The breeds are listed in order of availability. For example, timber harvesting of horse chestnut, plane tree and juniper is not carried out at all: the former are too valuable for landscaping in the southern regions, and juniper is endangered and protected. Industrial harvests of elm are almost entirely used for shoe lasts, weaving shuttles, etc., and rowan trees - for weapon stocks; There is no full-fledged plastic replacement for them yet. Stone birch grows very slowly, in limited places, and does not renew itself well, so its harvesting is strictly regulated, and its wood is expensive.
Note: Walnut is especially valuable for furniture - its wood combines high hardness with excellent toughness, the most openwork carving It doesn't hurt the nut. And walnut wood from burls - large growths on the trunk - is not inferior in texture to Karelian birch.
At the beginning of a carpentry career, it is better to limit yourself to pine, birch, oak, acacia and boxwood. The countertop will be pine or oak; birch - on the legs of a pine table; in the countertop it warps a lot from spills. Acacia and boxwood make excellent dowels, see below.
For a pine tabletop made from boards, you can and even should use low-grade cheap boards - knotty, twisted ones. But, of course, without falling knots, cracks, wormholes and traces of rot in the form of spots of unnatural color: black, gray, blue, green, in general, not similar to this tree. For example, traces of rot on black (ebony) wood may be whitish or yellowish.
Why is there substandard quality on the countertop? Perhaps also unedged, which needs to be finished using a circular saw and jointer? And after skillful processing, they turn out to be layers of remarkable beauty, on the left in Fig. Manufacturers do not like such wood: the production cycle is delayed and waste increases. But for yourself, doing it yourself is not so scary compared to the result.
Wooden pot
Commercial pine has a clearly defined wood zonation in the form of annual growth rings; other conifers and many deciduous species also have it. On the cut of the board, the rings form the so-called. hump in the form of thin concentric arcs. If the top of the tree is directed across the face of the board, as in Fig. in the center, then when joining the shield for the tabletop (see below), the boards are oriented with their humps alternately up and down, from below in Fig. If the humps are directed towards the end of the board (on the right in the figure), then the boards are placed in the shield with their humps in one direction. These subtleties are necessary so that during operation the tabletop does not crack or warp.
Varnishes, paints, impregnation, glue
A free way to protect wood from rotting is used motor oil, but for what you eat, this is not the best option. Impregnation with water-polymer emulsion (WPE) twice, with a break of 3-5 days, would be optimal; it will provide protection to the table for the entire duration of its life. Even birch plywood impregnated with EPE is suitable for furniture front panels: coated with varnish on top, it does not delaminate.
Old furniture nitrocellulose varnishes NTs-218 and NTs-2144 with solvent No. 647 are gradually going out of use: they are superior to acrylic varnishes in all respects water based; In addition, they are safe to use. Also, glues, bone carpentry and BF-2 with alcohol are inferior to PVA; True, to obtain a high-quality seam, the latter requires applying glue to both surfaces, keeping them touch-free before joining and keeping them under pressure for 1-3 days, but in home production this is acceptable for yourself.
Wood for furniture can be tinted in advance and protected with stain, which allows you to make beautiful typesetting parts; an example will be given below. To tint the assembled units, you can use paints based on the same varnish and artistic (not painting!) dyes: oil in tubes for NC varnishes and acrylic water-based for the same varnish.
First, prepare the “painting”: take 30-50 ml of varnish and squeeze 1-1.5 cm of paint into it while continuously stirring thoroughly with a painting brush. The paint is stored in a tightly closed bottle and added to the varnish to the desired tone; A test for it is made on a piece of wood, the tone is determined by the complete drying of the varnish. Colored varnishes based on NC and oil paints can be mixed according to the mixing rules oil paints for painting; acrylic - no restrictions.
First steps
The country table is the first of the homemade ones. If there are 1-2 brick pallets left from the construction site, then a table made from pallets will be the first of the first. Not only because it is extremely simple, but also because it is very useful on the farm.
From one pallet, sanded, impregnated and varnished, it turns out garden table like a magazine one, on the left in the figure. If you have a pair in stock, you can make a wall-mounted work desk-rack out of them in literally half an hour, in the center and on the right. You can also weave chains for it yourself from soft wire, covered with a PVC tube or, better, heat-shrinkable. To fully raise the tabletop, small tools are placed on the shelf of a wall pallet.
With a little more work, a prefabricated cutting table for the dacha is made from one pallet, allowing you to move the summer-autumn harvesting campaign outside without littering with husks and without trampling on stalks. For the winter, this table is assembled into a compact package. The design is clear from Fig; Place a bucket under the hatch in the countertop.
The next in order of complexity is the well-known country trestle table, in common parlance a goat. Its structure of 40 mm boards is shown on the left in the figure, and in addition to it is a bench of the same device. And on the right is a country folding table based on the same principle. It has articulated joints (M8-M12 bolts, washers and nuts with locknuts); in the place marked in green, a stop boss is placed on nails between the crossbars of the table top. When folded, this table fits in the trunk of a car, so it’s also suitable for going on a picnic. If this is not expected, or the trunk is larger, the table top can be made longer.
Finally, a gazebo table also does not require any special tools or skills, see fig. below. The material is the same magpie board and some inexpensive fasteners.
One step closer to art...
To advance in table building, you now need to learn some of the basics of carpentry. A table, in general, consists of a tabletop, its support frame, perhaps with niches and/or mechanisms, or simply a plate - a base - legs, and knots holding everything together. Let's go through them starting with the connections along with the legs, because... their fastening is the most weakness table.
Connections and legs
At first, we need to master the connection on dowels - round wooden bosses, see fig. Dowel joints are assembled using quick-drying glue that does not require curing: wood glue, BF-2, acrylic. Sometimes, to connect thin boards, instead of dowels, nails with bitten off heads are used, pos. 4, but this is bad: the wood dries out, but the metal does not, and over time the connection becomes loose.
For dowels, use thin-layered wood that is stronger than both parts being connected, i.e. the hardest rocks. A pine table on birch legs can be connected with oak or beech dowels. There are ready-made round sticks for cutting dowels on sale; Before use, the edges of the dowels are chamfered. Plastic dowels are also sold, but they are intended exclusively for detachable connections, eg. inserts in sliding tables.
The legs are attached to industrial tables with detachable drawers, see fig. on right. The item marked in yellow is the simplest, cheapest and worst. Buyers of Shiroptrebov Soviet furniture are well aware of its shortcomings and complete lack of advantages, let it remain there. Reliable, holds well, except for the legs, and the boards of the underframe, drawers with mortise jibs, “green” pos. They also require the least cost, but are quite labor-intensive, so they are rarely used in industry, but just right for an amateur. The drawbar with a shaped steel jib, at the top right in the figure, is even stronger; In this way, you can attach legs with a round head and any legs in general, but you need purchased shaped parts made of high-quality steel.
Note: The legs are attached to the round table as shown below in Fig.
Detachable legs are needed not only for ease of storage and transportation. In a small apartment with a narrow corridor, it is often simply impossible to push a table with legs into the living room, no matter how you turn it. Modern apartments are more spacious, and in one-story private houses the table can be brought in/out through the window, so in such cases the strength and durability of a table with tightly secured legs comes to the fore.
For tables on a rectangular base, the heads of the legs for blind fastening must also be rectangular, pos. 1 in Fig. By the way, the drawers can also be one-piece: then the legs have dowels that pass through a mortise wooden jib. From the inside, the dowels are cut flush and wedged with dogwood or boxwood wedges inserted across the grain of the jib wood. Assembled with glue, such a connection is so strong and durable that you can fight with these 200-year-old tables by grabbing the legs.
Enough quality tables on turned legs simply assembled on dowels, pos. 2. For simpler tables, the legs are made of timber and fastened with self-tapping screws after attaching the tabletop to the tabletop, pos. 3. Even simpler and lighter are the legs from a pair of boards each, pos. 4 and 5. To prevent them from clinging to the floor, you need to put thrust bearings on them below or put the table on wheels.
Tabletop
The easiest, but not the cheapest, option is to order a countertop made of laminated chipboard (chipboard, laminate). Laminated chipboard for countertops is produced in the form of so-called. postforming - slabs 3.6x1.2 m thick 20-60 mm with decorative coating. The upper edge of the postforming plate is rounded, the lower edge has a drip tray, see fig. Modern furniture laminate is completely environmentally friendly, no matter what those who don’t want to forget the furniture, which stank of phenol for months, gossip about.
Postforming is well purchased by small furniture enterprises. They always have his waste; They will gladly cut your tabletop to size for you at an affordable price if the company has a jig cutting machine. Perhaps such an order will be accepted by a single individual entrepreneur if he is sitting idle. Ready slab and close, i.e. cover the end PVC edging(edge). If you do the edging yourself (sometimes they ask for an absurd extra payment for edging), then keep in mind:
- The upper and lower flanges of the edging have different profiles, see on the left in Fig. Mix it up and there will always be a dirt edging on the table.
- The edging must be taken exactly according to the thickness of the slab. You can put a 24 mm edging on a 25 mm slab, but it will soon slide off.
- The groove for the edging ridge must be selected using a manual disk cutter; No one seems to have done it properly with a saw yet.
- Before installing the edging, a thin layer is applied to the surface of the end silicone sealant and the “sausage” is squeezed into the groove; in this case, the silicone will also act as a lubricant, without which the edge ridge may simply become wrinkled.
- The comb is inserted into the groove with light blows of the mallet, gradually moving along the contour. The tabletop should lie face up on the support; squeezed out excess silicone is immediately wiped off with a clean rag lightly moistened with table vinegar.
Plank tabletops are held together in plank frames with wedges and spacers - wedges. It’s quite possible to make the vamps yourself; You need 3-4 per tabletop. The boards (cheeks) of the weim are wrapped in polyethylene so that the shield does not stick to them. In Fig. for example, the process of making a round tabletop; The rectangular one is put together in the same way, only cutting it to size is easier. The shield is attached to the tabletop using glue and dowels (see below); if the boards are tongue-and-groove, dowels are not needed. When rallying on PVA, the next plot is kept until the applied glue comes off before installing it in the clamp.
Countertops are often assembled without rims on a plaza - a flat surface covered with plastic film. It will not be possible to assemble a good board panel on the plaza: either it will come out cracked, or the boards will stand on end when assembling it. But stacked tabletops from fragments are obtained in in capable hands simply wonderful. For example, at pos. 1-3 fig. – tabletop made from sawing waste, tinted with stain. And at pos. 4-5 The base of the tabletop was the platform itself, made of thick plywood. The tile and its break are glued tile adhesive, then the depressions are filled with grout, the surface is varnished and the outline is outlined with a wooden strip edge.
Note: These examples do not illustrate all the possibilities of making inlaid artistic tabletops with your own hands.
Underframe
The table base with non-removable legs is a simple wooden frame, on the left in Fig. Niches and parts of mechanisms are not involved in the power circuit. If the table is longer than 1.2 m, or the tabletop is removable/extendable, or large operating loads are expected (for example, a work table), the underframe is reinforced with stiffening ribs in the center. If the legs are attached with drawers, then the underframe is made integral with the tabletop to create a single power circuit, on the right in Fig.
Without frame
Tables without an underframe are also known, in which the tabletop and legs work in a single supporting system. Very durable, e.g. plywood table on the left in the figure; its connections are dowel. Unfortunately, this is not an economical design for an amateur: the sidewalls cannot be assembled from pieces, they must be solid. In mass production, the waste is not very large, but a sheet of plywood with a thickness of 24 mm or more will be used in one piece for large sidewalls, and another 1 piece for smaller ones. The table on the right is quite possible to make with your own hands: the load-bearing frame is prefabricated; connections - in a tenon with a tightening bolt and half a tree. However, the tabletop in this case should be round or square, with rounded or right corners.
... and we find ourselves in the kitchen
Exactly. The kitchen table is the next in order of complexity after the simplest country tables. It should already meet the requirements of apartment ergonomics, dimensions - 75 cm in height for people of average size; the width of the place for 1 eater/rider is 60-80 cm, depending on its corpulence, the width of the tabletop is at least 70 cm. The aesthetic appearance is very desirable, but is not decisive: suddenly you messed up with the decoration, that’s why the tablecloth. The countertop should be easy to clean, durable, and resistant to spilled heat from hot dishes.
All these requirements will be satisfied by a table made of chipboard on metal legs; They are also sold separately in sets of 4 pieces, with fasteners, on the left in Fig. Factory-made table legs are usually equipped with height-adjustable heels. A table, the manufacture of which will be reduced to screwing the leg sockets with confirmatory screws, will cost 30-50% less than a completely purchased one, and in appearance it will not be inferior to it, on the right in Fig.
If you are not too lazy to put your hands to it, you can make steel legs with your own hands. It is not only cheaper, but also more durable option: the sockets of the branded legs are cast from rather fragile silumin; the fastenings weaken over time and need to be tightened. You can cut out the nests yourself from good steel, and weld the very legs into them.
In a larger kitchen, there may be room for a larger table. In such a case, follow up. rice. Rustic style kitchen table plans. This table is “rustic” not only in appearance: it does not have a single nail or metal fasteners at all. Just wood and glue. A connoisseur, seeing this, nods his head in understanding and approval, and the design is simple and accessible to a beginner. True, in addition to the tabletop, you will also have to assemble the panels for the sidewalls, but in this case the extra work is worth it.
Kruglyashi
A table with a round top is appropriate in any room, if it fits there. But a table top made of boards in this case is not the best option: due to the presence of sharp corners, without a frame, which is very complex and labor-intensive, it is susceptible to splitting. Composite countertops made from small fragments, like the one described above from waste, are free from this drawback; Unlike laminate roundels, they are decorative, stylish, unique and practically free.
There are even more sharp corners in a finely-set countertop, but here the “broom law” comes into play. Not the American Senator Venik, who loves democracy in Russia to the point of complete oblivion about it at home, but that broom that is used to sweep away trash. As you know, it is impossible to break it (the broom, not the senator) when tied, but even a child will break it twig by twig. So here, thanks to the ease of distributing loads between small fragments, a table top assembled from them works like a solid slab, and after assembly you can cut it even “Zu”.
Note: The idea of the senator-broom, sorry, Broom, was brought to mind by the statement of his compatriot Samuel Clemens, world famous as Mark Twain: “I assert, and I undertake to prove it, that Mr. Cooper has no more imagination than a bull. But not the bull that moos in the pasture, but the one that supports the bridge.”
How to make a semi-folding round table is shown in the figure; On the right there are the tabletop dimensions and assembly order. And in Fig. Above on the right is a small round table for the hallway, according to the old classification - a business table. Its feature is the minimum number of connections; assembly with glue. Any round piece will fit on the tabletop, from a cut tree stump to a cardboard one, made according to the method of making cardboard shelves, but the underframe must be durable, made of wood (two-hundred-piece board) or laminated chipboard.
Let's go further: to the living room
The table in the main room of the house should suit the whole house. At the same time, with the modern desire for laconic design (which also saves costs on living space), the table should, for the time being, not be conspicuous and take up less space. Therefore, one of the most popular pieces of furniture these days has become a transforming table.
The simplest transformable table, which, despite all its transformations, remains a table and does not turn into a closet or bed - a table-bedside table; It is quite possible to make it yourself “from scratch”. There are 2 options that are most common here. On the left in Fig. – the table is unfoldable, it has a record ratio of occupied space in expanded and collapsed form. These are most often placed in studio apartments perpendicular to the wall on the border of the kitchen and living areas. With the tabletop wings lowered, it will serve as a bar. By lifting the wings one at a time, you can get a kitchen or everyday dining table, and when fully deployed (in the center), it will provide space for a fairly crowded banquet.
For a bachelor living in a small apartment, a folding table-bedside table, on the right in Fig. It's basically 2 small round ones. folding tables, described above, connected by a rectangular insert. You can have lunch with one folded one, because, unlike the previous option, there is somewhere to put your legs. And when you turn it around, spend a romantic evening with a beautiful stranger or intimate gatherings with friends.
All the above qualities are combined in transforming coffee and dining tables with a mechanism. The variety of transformation mechanisms is great, but for tables, which are always tables, they mainly come down to 2 types: elevator (pantograph) and book. How they both work, see the video:
Theoretically, a book is more stable than an elevator, although a lot depends on the quality of execution. Book lovers are more popular because a book-like mechanism can still be made independently, but an elevator outside production conditions is unlikely.
How the book-table unfolds is shown step by step in Fig. on right. To make it yourself, you need to know that the key unit is the damping-balancing elastic link. Quite expensive branded designs use very softly operating gas dampers (gas lifts), but for an amateur it is better to opt for a spring damper, and not because gas lift is much more expensive.
The fact is that the gas lift must be coordinated within fairly narrow limits with the kinematics of the lever system, the weight of the tabletop, underframe and the dead weight of the levers. If the balance of the entire system does not fit into its characteristics, the mechanism simply will not work. And the spring can always be tightened/loosened; as a last resort, replace it. In general, an unsuccessful homemade transforming table with gas lifts can rarely be “brought to fruition,” but a spring table almost always does. If you still decide to suffer with a homemade acrobat table, in Fig. – drawings of the spring transformation mechanism.
Without the availability of drilling, turning and metal milling machines or access to them, most parts of the transformation mechanism will have to be ordered. Then its production will cost a little about $40, and you can buy a good ready-made one for $50-$60. Factory transformable coffee table Rarely does it cost less than $200, so even in this situation the savings are significant.
The transforming table is made to fit the mechanism. One of the most popular are Mazetti transformation mechanisms, due to their good quality at a moderate price for this class of products. In addition, Mazetti mechanisms are produced in a supporting frame (inset in the center in the figure), which greatly simplifies installation. Other pos. in Fig. show the structure and dimensions of the table for this mechanism.
For a strong feast
Whatever you say, a normal family with children, friends and relatives cannot do without crowded gatherings at the table, and here a transforming table will not always help out. However, we will leave more or less full banquet tables for the living room, as they say, for later: these are products of a higher order of complexity; primarily due to the sliding mechanism.
By the way, the good old “sliders” with wooden guides and wooden sliders of the tabletop halves (item 1 in the figure) are quite convenient and reliable when properly executed; in addition, you can make them yourself, but such a process requires a special detailed description. Modern sliding mechanisms with telescopic guides for full extension, pos. 2, allow you to use not 1, but up to 3-5 inserts, which increases the table capacity by 6-10 people, respectively, but they are quite expensive, and their installation requires a description no less voluminous.
There are banquet tables with folding inserts, pos. 3. In elite models, when moving apart/sliding the halves of the tabletop, the inserts lift, unfold and put in place or put back into the underframe, a very complex mechanism, but it manual options available for making at home.
As for banquet tables with retractable individual tables, arranged like a keyboard stand in a computer desk, they cannot be called popular: by leaning forward (and how can this be avoided if the house has no servants?), we get the board back into the table and our portion of the treat - for festive clothes.
But let's not talk about sad things. Let us remember that the table is not always moved apart, and you can use an extension, but a solid table is in any case more reliable. Therefore, in the series of pictures below there is a way to make a very durable and inexpensive dining table, and see how it looks “alive” on the left in the picture. at first.
In addition
You often want to paint a table, or any furniture, in more than just stripes or paint it artistically. To protect the design from external influences and to ensure the possibility of refinishing the varnish if necessary, the paint should not be applied, but rather rubbed into the wood before varnishing. The technique of painting by rubbing paint in layers is called glazing. So in conclusion, we offer a master class on glazing wood.
Video: master class on wood glazing
The kitchen table is the same age as the kitchen itself. Probably even older than this: in the sites and settlements of primitive people, large flat stones were found near the hearths, which served as cutting, distribution and dining tables; they contained remains of food and food. In this article we will look at how to make a kitchen table with your own hands completely at home. This will not only allow you to save a certain amount (in general, not ruinous), but will also provide an opportunity to acquire initial skills carpentry work, which may turn out to be much more significant in the future. The most common types are used in kitchen tables furniture joints, but its design forgives rather serious flaws in operation. There are also great-looking types of kitchen tables, for the manufacture of which it is enough to be able to saw off a piece of board and tighten a screw.
A table in the kitchen also provides considerable opportunities for creative self-expression: much less skill is needed here than imagination, and failure will not ruin the entire interior. The samples of original kitchen tables in the photo below are quite accessible for making with your own hands, but first you need to get a feel for the design and material at a basic level, which is what we will try to help the reader with.
There are at least 15 different ways to make a kitchen table, including artistic forging and casting from homemade artificial marble. However, firstly, we will limit ourselves to kitchen tables made of wood, as a material that allows us to obtain the desired result with at the lowest cost labor, money and time.
Secondly, we will deal with tables with rectangular or rounded corners. A round table requires 1.6-2.2 times more usable space than a rectangular table for the same number of eaters. Moreover, the first meaning refers to the case when the hostess is deprived of a free approach to him and must be served over the shoulder of the person sitting. This already falls into the category of parodies of the rules of good manners. Like, how should you tilt the plate when finishing the soup: towards you or away from you? Answer: depending on what you want to pour on yourself or the tablecloth. In addition, a round table in a small kitchen is stronger than a rectangular table of the same capacity, wedged into the so-called. functionality triangle, see below.
Dimensions and ergonomics
The height of the kitchen table is normal, 700-780 mm, counting from the floor to the top surface of the tabletop. For people of average height, the optimal table height is 750-760 mm. But with the dimensions of the kitchen table in plan, the situation is more complicated.
The essence is in the same triangle of functionality: refrigerator-sink-stove. Ideally, it should be rectangular isosceles with legs of 1.2-1.6 m. However, the ergonomics of the kitchen is spoiled much more than a slight deviation from these proportions by wedging the dining area into the hypotenuse. Simply: the hostess bent over the sink or stove and pressed her seductive forms against her husband’s cheek just when he brought the spoon to his mouth. Therefore, it is advisable to make the table in the kitchen, especially of economical layouts, smaller, as long as it is comfortable for the eaters.
The minimum acceptable dimensions of a family kitchen table in plan are considered to be 600x900 mm. For single people, let's say a table is 450x750 mm, like in railway cars. In this case, in a “micro-kitchen” or kitchen area of a small-sized one-room apartment, it is also permissible to make it a wall-mounted folding one, see below. But optimal sizes kitchen table tops are considered (650-800) x (1100-1400) mm, depending on the available usable area and the build of the users.
Which one to do
Traditional kitchen table - on the base, pos. 1 in Fig. The underframe is the supporting frame of their boards placed on edge - the tsar. The drawers can be tightly fastened to the table legs, and the tabletop can be placed loosely on them; those. its fastenings only prevent horizontal displacement. This kitchen-sized table is simpler in design and stronger, but it is more difficult to bring in/take out, especially if the passage to the kitchen is narrow. The second option is that the drawers are tightly fastened to the tabletop, and the legs are detachable. In this case, the tabletop needs to be durable and not made of anything suitable for use. case, the material, and the design is more complicated. But there are no problems with bringing in/out. Both of these options for a classic kitchen table will be discussed in more detail below.
The table on the base can also be artistically designed, pos. 2. Making an artistic kitchen table is not as difficult as it might seem. The basis of its design - turned shaped legs - can be easily obtained from commercially available railing balusters (see below). For a novice craftsman who knows how to use a jigsaw, a figured sawed-off drawer does not pose a problem. What remains is a molding - a shaped chamfer on the lower edges of the drawers. You can rent a manual one for it. milling machine with a cutter of the profile you like, with it the work itself on setting the molding takes less than an hour plus 10-15 minutes of training on some kind of cutting.
Tables are no less common in kitchens beam structure, pos. 3. Even in their simplest design (see 2 options below) they are more attractive than tables with a base. However, to complete them in a high-end design (item 4) requires well-equipped carpentry and solid manufacturing skills. Beam tables require more material, but their undeniable advantage is that they can be made completely collapsible without tools (also see below).
Tables with a load-bearing tabletop without an underframe (item 5) are also very often found in kitchens. In a factory-made version, this is perhaps the cheapest type of good quality kitchen tables. A set of legs for such a table + a postforming tabletop (see below) will cost about 2,500 rubles, and assembly will take at most half an evening. But when completely self-production With such a table, a beginner will encounter some significant nuances, see below.
Tables-books, they are also tables-pedestals, pos. 6, initially created a sensation due to its compactness when folded and the ability to be used in a half-fold version, but then there was a period of some disappointment. Firstly, no matter how you sit at such a table, your legs feel uncomfortable. Secondly, in the first samples, the rotary support lock was the simplest, consisting of a pair of 50x20 bars, attached with a gap equal to the thickness of the support to the underside of the tabletop. The outer faces of the bars were often removed with a wedge so that the support would not cling to them when unfolding the table. However, if you accidentally pry the tabletop with your knee, the lock is immediately released. Therefore, such tables could not do without a hodgepodge of cutlets and mashed potatoes on the trousers and the floor, and a reliable and easy-to-use mechanical lock turned out to be very complex and expensive. Nevertheless, both amateur craftsmen and serious manufacturers are improving this, in principle, very promising design, which will be the subject of a special section in this publication.
Wall-mounted folding tables (item 7) are rarely found in very tiny kitchenettes. Most often - among busy bachelors who are accustomed to doing everything while standing, even sleeping on the carpet in front of their bosses, because... have all the disadvantages of book-tables with virtually no room for improvement. Serving tables (item 8) are used much more often on the farm, but this is a separate class of furniture with its own specific qualities and manufacturing technology, so here we will limit ourselves to just mentioning them.
Technological subtleties and innovations
The kitchen table, firstly, is made from wood species or materials that are little or not subject to shrinkage when dried: oak, hornbeam, wenge, laminated chipboard, MDF. Ordinary industrial wood in a kitchen atmosphere with its fluctuations in temperature, humidity and organic vapors in the air begins to warp and crack after 5-7 years, even if impregnated and varnished. On the other hand, the dimensions of the kitchen table are small. This leads to some features of its manufacture, which ultimately make it possible to simplify the work.
Tabletop
This is the main detail of any table. For homemade table to the kitchen best option– buy a ready-made postforming countertop; they are available in a wide range of colors, textures and sizes. Postforming is a profiled laminated chipboard with rounded edges, finished to look like wood or other material. The advantages of postforming in relation to a kitchen table are as follows:
Postforming is good technologically for simplicity and speed of work. But countertops made from boards, the so-called, look much more solid. solid wood or furniture panels. Joining boards into an array is quite delicate and painstaking work; for this purpose, special devices are used - clamps. If you want to try your hand at making furniture from solid wood, we offer a selection of videos:
How to assemble a furniture panel with your own hands:
How to make a panel top for a kitchen table:
How to make a tabletop from wood end cuts:
In the last video, the material is junk, but you can achieve the look - cool oligarchs will salivate.
Dowels, confirmations and dowels
Traditionally wooden furniture going on the dowels. The dowel connection is invisible and cheap; Just in case, let us remind you what it is and how it is done, see fig. To connect wooden parts, wooden dowels are used, which dry out along with the connected parts; The laminated chipboard, which practically does not dry out, is connected with plastic dowels. Corner plastic dowels are rarely used, because... often break. Connections with wooden dowels are usually glued.
It is often difficult for novice craftsmen to achieve accurate markings for the dowel connection. Tricks, such as marking with bitten nails (item 4 in the figure), do not always help, and it is impossible to remake an incorrectly marked dowel connection; both parts go to waste. Therefore, it is better for beginners to assemble their first products using Euro-furniture screws - confirmed ones. This is more expensive, but does not require special skills, because... the confirmation hole in both parts, compressed with a clamp, is drilled in one go, see fig.
Parts made of laminated chipboard or dense thin-layer wood, connected with confirmats, last for many years. All the designs described below can be assembled both on dowels and on confirmations. However, in the latter case, the following rules must be observed:
- Use furniture grades for wood, not plumbing grades for plastic. They differ at first glance: furniture slots have a hexagon slot, and plumbing slots have a Phillips screwdriver.
- The diameter of the body of the confirmat without thread when attached to the end should be no more than 1/5-1/3 (as an extreme case) of the thickness of the attached part.
- The height of the confirmation neck should correspond to the thickness of the main part.
- The penetration of the threaded part of the confirmat into the attached part must be at least 5-6 full diameters of the confirmat.
- The hole (blind hole) for the confirmat is drilled to its full length with the head.
- Use only a twist drill for wood.
- The main drill must be inserted into a mandrel that exactly matches its diameter and screw size.
- Drill holes for confirmations with a main drill of a diameter equal to the diameter of the confirmation by thread.
In practice, it is not difficult for even a perfect “teapot” to fulfill these conditions:
- Based on the thickness of the part, we determine the diameter of the body of the confirmat without thread;
- There is a lot of information on confirmatories on the Internet, from which you can, knowing the diameter of the screw body, the thickness of the main part and the drilling depth, determine the required standard size. It is better to immediately open pictures for the request “furniture screw (or confirmation) drawings dimensions”;
- We are looking for a retail outlet where the seller, when asked to show furniture confirmations, shows them exactly;
- We say: “I need so many of such and such a standard size and a drill with a mandrel for them.” They may offer a solid drill just for this confirmation, it will be cheaper.
And a little more about dowels. It is best to place a detachable (freely applied) tabletop of a classic kitchen table on them. Incl. and for such purposes, plastic dowels with a round head or dowels with a cap and different types grooves on the long recessed and short protruding parts, see fig. on right. Thick tabletops are attached first, approx. from 20 mm; the second ones are thinner.
Various tables
Classic
Classic tables on the underframe along with the legs (item 1 in the figure) are traditionally connected (assembled) using tongue-and-groove joints, which is quite complex and labor-intensive. Modern instrument– a drill with a twist drill for wood and a screwdriver – in combination with legs, the section of the heads of which is not less than 60x60 mm (for balusters the heads are usually from 100x100 mm), allows for a kitchen table with plan dimensions of up to approx. 750x1500 mm can be made by connecting with wood screws at an angle, pos. 3. In any case, the outer sides of the drawers should be 1.5 cm away from the outer surfaces of the heads of the legs, this is necessary for overall strength. Minimum permissible height kitchen table drawer 120 mm; thickness – 30 mm.
It is highly advisable to reinforce the connection with oblique screws with diagonal ties in the corners (item 4, above) from the same board as the drawers. If the tabletop is not intended to be removed unless absolutely necessary, then the labor-intensive installation of it on dowels can be abandoned. Then, at the corners of the finished supporting frame, scraps of the same board - crackers - are cut into the drawers and the tabletop is attached to them from the bottom with self-tapping screws, pos. 4 below.
Tabletop classic table with detachable legs should be at least 24 mm thick (chipboard, plywood) or 30 mm thick (solid wood). Countertops made from other materials, e.g. artificial stone, suitable for tables on the base along with the legs, are not applicable here. Due to the large difference in thermal expansion modules between them and wood, the table will soon become loose.
Next, the drawers are attached to the tabletop with long confirmations right through the end, on the left in the figure, with sizing with wood glue or PVA. It is difficult to achieve accurate assembly using ordinary wood screws, because... they are without a neck to keep the joint from moving.
The next point is that jibs in the corners (also in the figure) are required, wooden mortise ones or ready-made steel overhead ones. The legs at the corners are attached in the usual ways, on the right in Fig.
Desk drawer
A drawer is a classic structural module of a classic kitchen table. The guides for the table drawer are the same as for the drawers of the bedside table, chest of drawers, and closet. Since a large weight load is not expected in this case, and the smooth movement of the drawer and the ability to fully extend it are not of great importance, you can use inexpensive roller guides on which the keyboard boards of computer desks run.
Device furniture box shown on the left in Fig. It is not necessary to assemble its tray the old fashioned way on a box tenon (on the right in the figure); you can use self-tapping screws into the ends of the boards. The thickness of the boards for the drawer sides is 12-20 mm. The plywood bottom is often fastened with a furniture stapler, but this is not entirely reliable. It is better to attach it with self-tapping screws through the cranial bars along the contour of the bottom. The front of the drawer can overlap the front side of the table or fit flush into it, it doesn’t matter.
To install the drawer in the table, an opening is cut to size in the longitudinal front drawer cross section drawer tray, plus allowances on the sides for the guides (indicated in the specifications for them), plus another 3 mm along the contour. Then the side support boards are installed to secure the guides. They are attached to the longitudinal frames from the inside using backing bars. There is no need to fasten it to the tabletop; it will become loose. Next, assemble the box, attach it to it and to support boards resp. the guide parts push the drawer into place, that's all.
Quite simple
Quite simple but good looking kitchen table a classic look can be made on a supporting frame made of boards, see fig. on right. Its length, if the drawer section is at least 120x20 mm, can be increased to 1100 mm. Tabletop – any weight up to 15 kg. The angle of inclination of the legs from the vertical is 15-20 degrees, this is one fundamental point in this design. The second is transverse ties made of 50x15 timber, they give the entire structure the necessary rigidity. So, although this table looks classic, in fact it is already a beam table.
Beam
Drawings of a pair of kitchen tables with a beam structure are given in Fig. Above - completely collapsible without tools. The tabletop is structurally any, placed on dowels, although the style of this table (rustic) is fully consistent only with a tabletop made of solid wood. A variant of its fastening from the underside without dowels on cranial bars is shown in the inset in the center on the right.
In this product, a beginner may find the bottom bandage (longitudinal tie) with a beveled through groove for the wedge to be a stumbling block. In fact, everything is very simple: the bottom bandage is assembled with glue from 3 layers of 10 mm plywood or boards. How to make beamed kitchen tables of this type, you can watch the following video:
Video: DIY table by components
The table, drawings of which are shown below, has 2 features. First, all material is boards with a width of 120 mm, timber is not used. The second is that only a tray is provided for the tabletop, and it can be made of glass, plywood with a mosaic of tiles or its fragments, etc. The gap between the board of the tabletop and the frame of the tray is prone to clogging, but removing the tabletop for cleaning is also easy. So whether it’s rustic or modern, whether it’s a kitchen table, boudoir or coffee table, you decide for yourself.
Without table support
Factory-made kitchen tables without bases are usually produced with postforming countertops, pos. 1 in Fig. Those who want to make something similar on their own for a wooden tabletop will encounter the following tricks.
First, a table stand is still needed, because wooden beam from 50x50, pos. 2. The fact is that mechanical stress in boards always flows to the corners, where they are distributed very unevenly. But the wood under all 3 fastening points of the leg frame must be tensioned approximately equally, otherwise the fastening will loosen on its own. Timber piping expands the fan of stress in a given place to an acceptable value, but it is impossible to replace continuous piping with corner pads; they will be of no use.
The second is the material of the countertop. Standard threaded sockets for mounting leg frames (item 3) are designed for laminated chipboard or dense, fine-grained wood. If the tabletop is made of pine, etc. layered enough soft wood, then the nests can, having torn the layers, crawl back out already during the installation of the clips. And the probability that this will happen when someone accidentally pushes the table is close to 100%
And the third is the leg clips themselves. In cheap sets of parts for tables without tabletops from “alternative” manufacturers, they are most often made of silumin, pos. 4. And silumin, as you know, is very, very fragile. In general, if you like such tables, it will be easier to buy a ready-made one with a guarantee. Most likely, and cheaper than assembling a kit for self-assembly at retail.
Books and Cheburashkas
The disadvantages of the table-book of the original design (see figure on the right) have already been mentioned above. In Fig. Below is a drawing of the design of a table-book (conventionally, only one rotary support is shown without the wings of the tabletop), which eliminates them in an amateurish, but effective manner. Simply, the width of the rotary support is reduced by more than half compared to the wing span of the tabletop (350 and 720 mm, respectively). Now the support rotates 90 degrees, so you can sit comfortably as you wish. The support, located in the working position along the longitudinal axis of the tabletop, holds it even better than an oblique one, and in order to lift the tabletop to the exit top bar the supports are made from a simple clamp (see above), your knees need to be raised so that it will be very uncomfortable for you. Overall stability is ensured by the legs of the cabinet section, which must be made as long as possible, but not less than 600 mm. Otherwise, the swivel supports must be brought down in height to the floor level.
A fundamentally similar solution was used in the wall-mounted folding table (items 1 and 2 in the next figure), but here the bevel of the hanging corner of the support contributes to operational reliability. Which is quite applicable in the previous one. case: there are no contraindications for performing that support in the form of a trapezoid converging downwards.
A proprietary solution to the problems of a book-table is removable legs stored in the cabinet. Placing them is not much more troublesome than catching the latch on the tabletop with a rotating support. Such a table-book is, of course, more expensive, but its operational reliability is complete: there is no latch, because it's simply not needed.
The next step in the evolution of the book-table is a design with a larger cabinet and one leg on each wing of the tabletop. There are half as many legs, which means the whole table is cheaper. Its stability has only increased due to the expansion of the cabinet, it is generally comfortable to sit, and there is more space in the cabinet (which is always in short supply in the kitchen).
Consumers liked such kitchen tables so much that they were already given the nickname - Cheburashka table. Probably, remembering from the cartoon: “Here, we built, built, and finally built it.” A folding kitchen table as it should be.
Alternative
If your kitchen is combined with a living room or you plan to combine them, then you don’t need to think about a kitchen table; it’s better to replace it with a column. You can not only drink at the bar counter, you can also eat there. The point of such a replacement is that at least half of the dining area goes beyond the kitchen, and the rest is used sporadically and does not wedge itself into the functional triangle. Result? See fig. It is more convenient to work and dine in a 5-meter kitchenette with a bar counter, which separates the apartment zones, than in an 8-9-meter Brezhnevka kitchen. Don't believe it? Let's do the math.
The kitchen table does not stand on its own. To plant the eaters, you need to add 400 mm along the contour, and another 300-350 for the approach. As a result, a 900x600 mm table requires approx. 2.5 sq. m of “living space”, and the table is 1200x700 mm and all 3.5 sq. m. It is very, very difficult to push such a thick piece into a kitchen of normal size without crushing the soft-boiled functional triangle. Here, even if two people sit at the counter from the kitchen side, the functional triangle is not disturbed, and the hostess is within easy reach of everything.
One of the famous culinary experts once said: “The kitchen is conservative, like the digestive tract.” Here, of course, he bent and overdid it. Something like a stove, refrigerator, food processor and microwave is not found in our stomachs, although the kitchen is really conservative. But even in the most conservative sphere, at some point there comes a time that requires fundamental changes.