My Cedar Table is Nearly Finished

Eggcelsior

Great craftsmanship and wonderful pictures, I especially like the 3rd to last with the glow of the wood reflecting off of the egg.

anzyegg

That is truly one great looking table with the Cedar & beautiful piece of granite. I'd definitely put doors on. Great pics.

QDude

Will it be exposed to the elements or covered?  What finish did you use?

tulocay

Fantastic looking table. Thanks for sharing.

Newsguy

I am about to add a drawer and doors below that. I just need a bit more time at YouTube University before embarking on these additions. The drawer will give me a place for the many Egg items that now are distributed in various places in my kitchen. The space below will work for lump etc. I think. And, yes, I still need to find the bottle opener that is conspicuously missing, as pointed out above by johnmitchell. My shop teacher had us sand a wooden cutting board for several months before we were allowed to put a finish on it and the class. So I claim no expertise as a result of my academic background in woodworking.

Eggcelsior

Youtube University needs to hire you as professor emeritus post haste. Your table is really nice.

Newsguy

Will it be exposed to the elements or covered?  What finish did you use?

Yes it sits on my patio outside with no covering. I used marine spar varnish. I did four coats and gave a fifth coat to some of the more weather-exposed areas. Light sanding between coats. I will probably look for a cover of some kind for winter, but the idea was to make it as weather worthy as possible. Had a good downpour yesterday, and the water beaded up nicely on all surfaces. Probably will need to add varnish from time to time if I don't find a cover.

Newsguy

Okay, the drawer and the doors are finally completed. They turned out to be amazingly difficult to get right. Measuring the drawer to fit precisely enough for the drawer slides to work and then getting them aligned properly was a long and frustrating process, but I finally got the drawer operating smoothly. The doors required precision positioning of the self closing hinges. And that was only after spending a lot of time figuring out which hinge I needed for an overlay style of door. A local cabinet shop guy helped me immensely and sold me some hinges from his stock. In the end, I know where the mistakes are, but they are not immediately obvious to others, so I'm okay with them. I'm proud of the end result. Overall it was fun to build, despite the need to figure out how to do things I've never done before. Now I will start to tally the receipts to see how much this thing cost me to make. 

apfroggy0408

wow awesome work!

minniemoh

That is some fine craftsmanship! Great job and welcome to the forum. With your attention to detail on your table, I am excitedly looking forward to your cooking posts.

Newsguy

minniemoh said:

That is some fine craftsmanship! Great job and welcome to the forum. With your attention to detail on your table, I am excitedly looking forward to your cooking posts.

What I know about cooking comes pretty much from the posts of others. I'll be doing my second brisket next week, so we'll see if I have anything useful to add about that when I'm done.

TexasBBQ

Fantastic design and excellent craftsmanship.  May I ask what is the distance between the first and second levels?  I am in the process of building my table and comparing various designs to BGE's suggested measurement of 15 inches.  Many thanks.

SanDiegoMike

Beautiful!

Jeepster47

Great looking table.  I especially liked the granite cutout being used as the base support for the egg ... that looks great.  Plus, the airspace under and over the cutout is the ultimate in safety.

Newsguy

TexasBBQ said:

Fantastic design and excellent craftsmanship.  May I ask what is the distance between the first and second levels?  I am in the process of building my table and comparing various designs to BGE's suggested measurement of 15 inches.  Many thanks.

Sorry for the delay. I haven't logged on in a while. It took me a while to figure out where to position the shelf where the egg sits. I had to figure in the thickness of the granite, the egg nest height, and thickness of the granite top. And the egg had to extend high enough above the granite to allow for the hinge to open in the back. And I didn't have the granite until all else was finished. All this is to say that it's hard to give you a rule of thumb about the distance. It had to do with the spot on the egg where the top of the granite top would hit it so the hinge would work. I had to add in the dimensions of the stuff the egg would sit on and then measure up from the bottom of the post.  I realize that this is not helpful, but I recall that the first thing I had to calculate was the distance from the bottom of the egg to the point on the egg where the top of the granite top should hit it. I believe that was 19 inches, but I'm not sure any more. With that, I could figure in the distance to the shelf top using the thikness of the stuff that would support the egg on the shelf. My wife checked my math with me over and over. In the end we were still off an inch, which tutned out to be fine because I hadn't included the height of the "feet" I used under the cutout granite piece. Summary, it's complicated. Unless, unlike me, you have some knowledge and skills. Good luck.

bvdw

Awesome JOB!!!!!!! I do have to say you have all the toys!! 

Sammi

@Newsguy, Nice clean solid looking table.   =D>

Newsguy

bvdw said:

Awesome JOB!!!!!!! I do have to say you have all the toys!! 

Some toys, but not all. A ban saw would be nice. And there are all kinds of things that I can think of that do one or two things well that I could use once every ten years or so. The table saw was the most longed for item that I justified with the table project.

Hawg Fan

That's one of the best looking tables I've seen posted here on the forum in a while. Nice job. I assume you work in the news media by your handle.

UrbanForestTurnings

Great job on that. What type of cedar?

UrbanForestTurnings

Looks like western red

Tinyfish

As it has been said many times already...great job.

Lindley

Fantastic!! Great color of wood and granite combo. First class job.

I used the granite circle cutout for the base of mine as well. I learned from my granite guy that the stone will fade in the sun over time. I was surprised to hear that. He recommended to cover it when not in use.