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mesquite table build

10,497 Views | 81 Replies | Last: 1 mo ago by Rattler12
agrams
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In reply to 13B • 12:12p, 9/23/24
AG
I've got a salt and pepper set I made from some osage, with repeated handling it's almost a charcoal now.

normal color change tends to stay around a golden tan after starting off at an almost toxic-looking yellow.
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rednecked
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12:38p, 9/23/24
AG
I have a pic somewhere of my guitar builder using a draw knife while forming the Bois d'arc neck. looked like he was shaving cheese.

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agrams
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In reply to rednecked • 12:44p, 9/23/24
AG
when i do turning out of Osage, the sawdust is so yellow it looks toxic all over my tools. Its a funky wood to be sure.
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1990Hullaballoo
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4:22p, 9/24/24
AG
I recently purchased a lathe from a fellow Texager and was considering a project with bois de arc, do you work it greenish or fully dried?
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agrams
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In reply to 1990Hullaballoo • 4:33p, 9/24/24
AG
turn it green, roughly 1" thick, then bag it up in a paper bag with the lathe shavings around it, bundle it up and put it on a shelf for a few months to finish drying. Then take it out and finish turn it.

You can check drying progress by measuring weight of the bag every few weeks.
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Rattler12
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In reply to agrams • 8:47a, 9/25/24
agrams said:
turn it green, roughly 1" thick, then bag it up in a paper bag with the lathe shavings around it, bundle it up and put it on a shelf for a few months to finish drying. Then take it out and finish turn it.

You can check drying progress by measuring weight of the bag every few weeks.
Your response just triggered an idea for me. A few years back I took a "spare" refrigerator we had and made a curing box for salami and such. I can control the temp and the humidity to within 1 degree and 2 % through two controllers. One for the fridge compressor and cold and a heat bulb and warm. The humidty between a humidifier and a de humidifier.

I've got another "spare" refrigerator. Why wouldn't the same thing work for green bowl blanks and smaller green wood pieces?
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agrams
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In reply to Rattler12 • 10:56a, 9/25/24
AG
the goal with drying is to remove the moisture evenly from the wood. you don't want the outside fully dry and the inside green, this will result in a lot of cracking.

Heat is good because it helps increase the vapor pressure of the water throughout the wood, but be careful with too low of humidity, you don't want to draw the water from the surface of the wood faster than it can move from the center to the outside.

bowls are compounded by the fact that they have end grain and side grain all in one piece, and moisture moves through them very differently. Trees love moisture moving up the trunk, but not out the bark.

I can take some pics of the rough turned bowls I have. the warping is impressive.
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Rattler12
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In reply to agrams • 11:23a, 9/25/24
agrams said:
the goal with drying is to remove the moisture evenly from the wood. you don't want the outside fully dry and the inside green, this will result in a lot of cracking.

Heat is good because it helps increase the vapor pressure of the water throughout the wood, but be careful with too low of humidity, you don't want to draw the water from the surface of the wood faster than it can move from the center to the outside.

bowls are compounded by the fact that they have end grain and side grain all in one piece, and moisture moves through them very differently. Trees love moisture moving up the trunk, but not out the bark.

I can take some pics of the rough turned bowls I have. the warping is impressive.
Not to derail the thread but the same thing can happen with cured sausages and salami in casings. Too little humidity and you get hard casing in the outside layers and the inside never drys. I cure the 3 inch thick salamis at about 50 to 52 degrees and 75 to 80 % humidity until they lose 35% of weight. Takes about 6 weeks.
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JayM
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In reply to agrams • 7:03a, 9/26/24
Lot of checks and cracks. How are you going to stabilize the wood?
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agrams
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In reply to JayM • 8:07a, 9/26/24
AG
I fill with epoxy. Mesquite is an exceptionally stable wood in its shrink rate from green to dry, but it also has one of the most equal radial and tangential shrink rates. Overall shrink rate leads to cracking, while higher ratios between radial and tangential cracks leads to more warping when drying.

sometimes on larger cracks I may butterfly, but with mesquite I don't often need to do that.
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BigHead 04
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9:23a, 9/26/24
AG
Such a cool process to watch. Thanks agrams!
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
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RED AG 98
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9:23a, 9/26/24
AG
Really beautiful work as always.

How do you flatten your glue-ups - old school sand and hand plane or anything more exotic? The guys I follow on YouTube mostly haul them off to industrial shops with very large equipment, but they're starting to use CNCs a bit too.
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agrams
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In reply to RED AG 98 • 10:29a, 9/26/24
AG
for rough flattening to remove any cupping/twisting/bowing, I use a router on a jig i made.


I didnt take pictures on this mesquite table, but 2 of the boards had about a 1/8-3/16" bow over their length, so i did use the router jig to set a good flat face on one side. Once that was done flat on one face, I could run them through the planer (24") to make both sides even and flat, and all boards the same thickness. I then glue them together, and i have a 48" drum sander I will run the full table through to get it down to about 120" sanded and the table overall flat. I then hand sand from there to finish.

I think this is a 30" wide desktop through the sander. Its slow, but it works. One day ill have a shop, 3 phase power, and a wide belt sander.
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RED AG 98
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In reply to agrams • 10:31a, 9/26/24
AG
Nice. Thanks for the reply.
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Rattler12
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11:50a, 9/26/24
You got a lot of "stuff" stuffed into a 2 car garage......how do you move around?
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lurker76
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In reply to agrams • 12:01p, 9/26/24
What is the channel you run the router in, and how to you guide it on the rails? That is a pretty impressive set-up.
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agrams
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In reply to lurker76 • 1:51p, 9/26/24
AG
its just some 3"x3" aluminum scrap i bought. The router slide on it in that picture, but since then I have built a customer mount that has 4 roller blade wheels it rides on. This reduced a lot of the friction from moving it back and forth. ill see if i can find some pictures of the upgraded setup.
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big ben
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3:03p, 9/26/24
AG
Please post pics of upgraded flattening setup, I have some large rough slabs I need to even up
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lurker76
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In reply to agrams • 3:15p, 9/26/24
Thanks. With so much you have going on, I hate to take you away from your projects, so please, no hurry on finding those pictures.
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agrams
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In reply to lurker76 • 5:49p, 9/26/24
AG


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SoulSlaveAG2005
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In reply to agrams • 7:58p, 9/27/24
AG
Awww man. That router sled is nice. Puts my east texas special to shame!
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agrams
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In reply to SoulSlaveAG2005 • 10:07a, 9/28/24
AG
I need to work on improving dust control on it. get some 2" or taller brush strips around it. the vertical board was a makeshift effort to help secure the dust collection hose to, but there's plenty of room for optimization.
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agrams
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3:29p, 9/28/24
AG
had to open the garage door to have room to feed this this back and forth.. but got It sanded down and the bench planed down. now to rough hand-samd to 120, dig out/open up and small defects exposed from the sanding, and start the epoxy tpuchup

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agrams
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1:36p, 9/29/24
AG
after hand sanding to 120, it's time to mark all the revealed defects and start filling then in. I take a small gouge and open them up a little, as most will be hiding larger voids underneath. I then mark and epoxy them in.

originally we had planned to remove the sapwood because the bug damage looked significant, but after a little cleanup on the sapwood, it revealed most all the damage was supercial, so I cleaned it up and left as much solid sapwood as possible.

it's rare to get sapwood on mesquite that is solid and not overly bug damaged, bit I think it makes it look much better.


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Rattler12
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2:24p, 9/29/24
Thats got to weigh a bunch.....
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agrams
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9:22a, 10/1/24
AG
lots of sanding last night to prep for finishing.

I can get to 80 grit on the drum sander, but then need to hand sand with a random orbital sander starting at 60, then 80, 120, 150, 180, and 220. the drum sander can leave lines, so I step back on the grit and need to sand any of those grooves/lines out. I do the backside first, and only sand that to 120. I draw a pattern with chalk so I can track my work and make sure I don't miss any spots. if I'm going to stain the piece, I would sand to 220. stains can settle into sanding swirls/marks, so it's pretty tedious to get it all sanded down enough.

I think I sanded from about 10:30 until 12:30, then sprayed the first coat around 1am.. was a late night.

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lurker76
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10:42a, 10/1/24
Amazingly beautiful. Thanks for the progress picture showing your chalk mark.
You have probably answered this question a hundred times before, but what do you use to finish your table projects?
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agrams
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12:18p, 10/2/24
AG
got the top sanded down and first coat sprayed last night. Will sand with 220 then do a second coat tonight. also got the underside of the bench sprayed, so will do a few coats on its top also tonight.

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SoulSlaveAG2005
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12:48p, 10/2/24
AG
Son of a beast that is beautiful
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BigHead 04
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2:43p, 10/2/24
AG
Agrams is the real deal yall. I love watching this thing come together
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
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aggiebrad16
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4:54p, 10/2/24
AG
You may have posted this already but what's the plan for the legs?? Incredible.
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BigHead 04
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3:06p, 10/4/24
AG
https://www.etsy.com/listing/501663403/

Picked some of these up off etsy for the bench and table both. Unfortunately they shipped from Poland are in limbo in Germany. I'm an idiot for not paying attention to where the manufacturer was located.
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
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smstork1007
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In reply to BigHead 04 • 3:14p, 10/4/24
AG
BigHead 04 said:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/501663403/

Picked some of these up off etsy for the bench and table both. Unfortunately they shipped from Poland are in limbo in Germany. I'm an idiot for not paying attention to where the manufacturer was located.
So this is your table Agrams is building? If so congrats, that's going to be a beautiful piece of furniture.
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Aggie12B
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4:01p, 10/4/24
AG
Abrams, you should create a YouTube channel showing off your woodworking. Finished products, works in progress, Q and A. It would be awesome. I bet you would gets a ton.of subscribtions
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BigHead 04
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In reply to smstork1007 • 4:10p, 10/4/24
AG
Yup sure is. Moved recently and needed a new table and never had a doubt who I wanted to get to build one
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
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