Double Wishbone Stretcher Tables
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
This project began with the addition of a “sun room” to my daughter’s house. She has a lot of greenery which led to a request for tables to set plants on to go in front of each window. The tables would have tile inset tops.
Some time ago I made her a desk and employed an arced stretcher to make it possible to slide a chair under the desk.
She asked if a similar arced stretcher could be used in these tables. This feature turned an easy table construction into one more fiddly to make.
I got one into the clamps last night. That is a lot of joints so I used liquid hide glue. Accurate M&T joints lead to a table coming together orthogonal. Diagonals are less than a mm different in length.
The difficulty in making the “double wishbone” stretcher is first laying out the dovetail joints and then making numerous saw cuts accurately.
One has to decide what to use for a reference surface and if there isn’t one there temporarily add one. Every aid I could think of was used to keep track of what was waste and what was to be left and what went where during assembly. Prior to assembly I sanded a key label off a piece and had to do another dry assembly to be sure of what went where.
In the end the joints that show came out well and the one that don’t acceptable.
