First real furniture build - Patio Table with joinery. Full build album

Final product. Plenty of mistakes but I'm incredibly proud how it came out. Except for fasteners attaching top to base, everything is joined

12 stopped mortise and tenons, 2 through m/t, 2 stopped angled m/t, 10 angled through m/t, 26 dowels securing m/t joints, and 16 half laps.

First time doing any of those, but I learned a heck of a lot and improved tremendously throughout

Original mockup and purchase list

Cut to general length. All rough cut western cedar from the orange big box store. Found a beautiful dark brown piece that was a perfect contrast to use for the breadboard ends (top of 2x6 pile)

Fiance helped! Most boards were pretty straight and flat so planer was used to clean rough faces

Planed

Starting the table top and aligning to route out cheeks of tenons for breadboard ends. As I found out later, I should do mortises first because it's much easier to fit tenon to mortise than other way around. One of many lessons learned.

Routing with 2 inch flattening bit

Cleaning up line (home made mallet!)

Routed over power cord...two lessons in one. Cord management and how to repair electrical cords. Put an end to that day pretty early

So I went fishing

And caught first trout fly fishing!

Shoulders cut

Lined up to mark mortises. Used a bunch of drill bit as spacers.

This saved a lot of time!

Hand chiseled each. I know cedar tends to split so reinforced the walls with cauls

Not bad for test fit

Marking out dowels. Spaced one ruler's width from wall of mortise.

Marking hole on tenon. I wanted to draw bore the joints so moved mark about 1-2 mm in. In retrospect, this was a huge mistake for soft wood that splinters like cedar

Time for glue up. Started out smooth

Until the mistake of drawboring bore it's ugly head. Blew out almost every single joint...

At least I drove dowels from top to bottom so structurally, I could save this with epoxy

I knew ahead of time a couple boards were still pretty wet from the box store but was on a tight timeline so started the build before allowing time for acclimation to Colorado dryness. Left the table top in the sun for a week to expedite the process while I started the base. Would fix cracks after.

Pretty much just had problems with one of the boards. Filled the cracks with epoxy.

Sealing the bottom. Placed on edge to get between the boards.

Top sealed. Used 'Exo Shield Deck and Siding' natural stain. It's a tung oil with UV blocker. My dad is a finish contractor and highly recommend this as it will protect and prevent fading for 2-4 years for exterior application.

Now for the base. Mitered legs at 10° and cut tenons. This was for an angled through mortise. Used a micrometer to get width

Divided that width by two and scored an arc from center of mortise. Furthest point on arc is the wall line for mortise. Used marking gauge to knife the mark.

Transferring the arc to a line

Making sure angles matched

Transferred angle to mark mortise exit

Not bad

Layed out bottom stretcher to mark mortises

Marking out tenons for bottom stretcher

Gluing up the legs. Had to inch each joint in together due to angles

I need to make a miter saw table but had to rig up a means to cut the legs parallel to top and level to eachother

Holy crap it worked!

Tenon for cross beam, one of my best cuts and a snug fit right off.

Test fit looks great!

Stopped straight mortise for angled tenon of the middle supports. Getting better at these!

Overthought how to mark the tenon and it wasn't centered properly

But test fit was clean and nobody will ever know

Laying out stretchers to mark for half laps

Racing through them

Rigged a couple clamps to find the point where the middle supports where level with main side stretchers

16 halves have been lapped

Every dang clamp I own went into this glue up

Sealed

Placed the base on our patio

And used figure 8 fasteners to attach top. I love how it turned out. I would definitely simplify it if I did it again but I'm happy with it. I can't believe the breadboard ends are the same species. I've never seen cedar that brown before.