Dining table build

I wanted to build the table using traditional joints, and only hand tools. Partly because I have grandiose ideas of being a hand tool purist, partly because I'm too poor for power tools. I decided on haunched Mortise and tenons, because I failed miserably at making a castle joint. I picked meranti for the rails, because it's what they had in the offcut bins at the sawmill. I had the face thicknessed to 36mm to make things simple chopping the mortices with a 12mm chisel. The first M&T was very loose, but the second fit like OJ's gloves, so I ploughed on ahead.

My accuracy here was hit and miss, and the joints were made loose due to me having to remove material to correct twisting and faces that weren't flush.

An exciting moment!

Once the assembly of the rails + legs was complete, I realised the legs were very wobbly and loose. Not wanting to risk my glue failing in the joints, I decided to construct cross-braces for the legs, joining the legs at each end, and then along the length. I used half-lapped dovetails in each instance in order to have the shape of the dovetails pull the legs inwards.

A lovely fit, but I then went on to cut the half laps at each end of this vertical section on the wrong face. Fortunately I had enough scrap to try again. The scrap was nowhere near square, so this took an annoying amount of time to correct

And here I cut the half lap housing on the wrong side of the fucking line. How I got this far without realising is beyond me.

I cut a filler piece out of some scrap here.

And then it broke. At this point I was close to tears

Absolutely cringing

Aaand the lengthwise cross-brace is too short are you fucking kidding me. Luckily, I had even more scrap, which took an eternity to get square enough to use.

Well, we finally made it. Glue-up time. I only have two sash clamps, so I glued it across the length and then the width.

This is how I fixed the table to the rails. An offcut of meranti has three sets of three holes in it, which are made into three elongated holes with the help of mr chisel. Instead of being neatly dowelled to the top, this was then screwed to the top with deck screws, because fuck it, I am so done with this table.

I drilled single holes on the face side, which would receive M8 bolts

Not my proudest moment...

Table legs were painted white, with two coats of white undercoat and one coat of brilliant white satin. I was going to do another coat of satin, but it takes a day to dry and cure between coats and I was getting really fucked off with my neighbour seeing me and asking "are you still at it?" every time she saw me.
Also, I have never masked anything as thoroughly as I had those rails

And here it is! Masking tape came off, rails and braces were oiled with Osmo (Amber) and the top has three coats of varnish.

The table is rigid, level, and there is absolutely no wobble in it at all. I'm absolutely thrilled with the finished product