Knock down table questions

Re: Knock down table questions

Don Stephan

My experience with KD hardware, it was screws or bolts and receivers. The furniture needed to be treated with care.

The weight of the legs alone will be significant, so I can understand why the interest in KD - it would take a crew of experienced movers to get it into and out of a residence. At minimum, could the legs be four pieces of 3/4" boards glued together? Do you have a source of kiln dried 25/4 oak and know a good chiropractor?

Why such a massive table? If there is a need to make a statement, it could be with conventional base and starburst oak veneer top, for example.

Engineer it

Ellis Walentine

This is more of an aesthetic question than a mechanical one. I wouldn't count on finding any ready-made KD hardware that would fit this application. If you're thinking of having big bolt heads showing on the table top, you can do that. I once made an executive desk -- similar size oval, in Brazilian rosewood -- with two hefty vertical slabs supporting it. To make the connection from the top to the "legs," I designed steel connectors, consisting of 1/4" thick steel plates that were securely screwed to the underside of the top, welded to 1/2" x 4" steel straps that went into deep sockets in the legs. Talk about rack resistant!

Engineering is an element in just about all furniture design. We make things to perform as intended, using available materials and resources. The important thing is to define your intention. Table legs, to me, are a lot like workbench legs: You don't want to have the table/bench wiggling around when you apply sideways forces to either horizontal axis. (You don't need to worry too much about the vertical dimension here; 6x6 legs could support a small truck.) So, the important thing is to provide an appropriate level of rack resistance. Deciding on what's appropriate is your design intent.

Making it happen might involve heavy duty hardware like I mentioned above, or it could be a more conventional table rail system, where the height of the rails is proportionate to the rack resistance they provide. You could make the rails knock-down by attaching them to the legs with sliding dovetails or some kind of cleverly-designed brackets, or maybe just angle iron segments screwed to leg and rail.

Ellis

Re: Knock down table questions *LINK*

John in NM

The easiest way is to add a corner brace to the skirt behind where the legs go and use it to bolt the leg on. The bolt pulls the leg tightly into the ends of the skirt. There's a good picture Bill Houghton provided in the article linked below. I've seen it done with hanger bolts in the leg and wing nuts on the other side of the brace, and with lag bolts right into the leg. The former is better for something that will be disassembled often.

Since the legs are so big, you could consider making them hollow, out of 4/4 stock. If you added a small corner wedge at the top you could probably use a T-nut inside the leg and just bolt to it. Kind of fussy though, considering a solid plug and hanger bolt would probably be more durable. It would be good to make hollow legs though, this thing does sound heavy!


http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=newarticles&file=articles_945.shtml

Thanks all...and

Barry Irby

The reason this is some heavy is I asked my DIL what she wanted and she sent me a picture of the British reproduction table built of reclaimed timber. The smallest on they made was 84" by 52" with a 2" thick top and 6 x 6" legs.

I have some QSWO I had sawn from a tree that fell on one of my rental houses. (That's sort of reclaimed isn't it?)

I have reduce the top to 80 by 48" with her permission and I made the top 1" thick because that is what I had. I am considering Laminating and additional thickness around the perimeter of the frame. I weighed the top today it came in at 88 lbs. Adding the lamination will push it up over a hundred pounds I am sure.

I am making the legs hollow but the corners are heavily chamfered, so the stock on two sides will be an inch.

I stopped at Fastenal today and I can get 5/8 square head bolts 7" long. Let the Engineering begin.

I forgot.....

Barry Irby

The are both in the military and this beast will get moved more than once before they retire.

I am thinking I might make the legs hollow and build a storage compartment into one or more for the bolts and hardware. I am also considering a crate to ship it in. That means they would have to store the crate between moves.