Critical Tips for Dining Table Design Projects

As someone with growing skills in carpentry, you may have landed on the humble dining table as your next project. Tables are deceptively complex builds, and an excellent opportunity to develop your practice in creating durable, precise wood joints – amongst a great many other skills. Here is a primer on the design and build process for a dining table, with some handy tips to incorporate as you start your table-building journey.

Tools of the Trade

It should go without saying that to build the best table you can make, you’ll need the right tools for the job. Some expert carpenters have completed pieces completely with essential hand tools that cannot cover years of experience and wisdom; you must invest in some workshop equipment to achieve even passable results.

Since you will be working with large-scale plank and sheet woods, you will need to cut these down to size; a Milwaukee circular saw should be your best friend for the early stages of your product – second only to a tape measure. To achieve precise joints, you will also need a variety of saws. A tenon saw is vital for joinery, while coping saws can make intricate and complex edges or curves. Files, chisels, and planes help you level and finish the wood and create additional carvings for aesthetic flair.

Initial Decisions

Of course, to start building a table, you first need to know what table you’re making. This could be as simple as a back-of-napkin sketch or as well thought-out as a 3D model in a CAD program. Critical initial decisions relate to the ‘brief,’ though – meaning they should answer basic questions like “how many people will sit at it?”, “how big a space will it have to sit in?” and “Should it exhibit special features, such as an expanding middle or a drop-leaf tabletop?”.

Material Choices

Material choices are vital to the success of your build. On a fundamental level, some woods are less suitable than others for bearing weight or holding finish; an extreme example is balsa wood, which is light and deforms frighteningly. Heavy and knotted woods can be much harder for less learned hands to work with, but some softwoods might be available in a different quantity or quality, depending on your location. Your design should inform your materials, but material availability may also need to tell your design. 

Choosing Joints

The structural integrity of your table rests on the joints you choose to make it with. Tabletops are often fashioned from wood-glued planks and then planed until uniform; as a beginner, consider adding dowel joints between each plank for additional stability. The table’s legs must meet with one another and the tabletop via a strong joint, too – mortise and tenon joints are a common choice here for a good reason.

Do Read: Green Roofing Solutions for Your Home

Aesthetics and Finishing

The final piece of the puzzle is finishing. Again, the material you choose exceptionally informs the next steps here; softwoods, for example, are more porous – and may require sealing before varnishing. Given the table’s purpose, water resistance is a vital consideration, but after this, your choice of varnish can rely almost entirely on aesthetic considerations.