The Plant Stand - Table

As usual, this project stems from a request from my wife. I can't complain about that though, because I really enjoy this hobby, and she lets me buy any tool or supply that I want. Inevitably, it will be used for something for her anyways!

She has developed a green thumb ever since we moved to our current house, and her love of gardening is what started this whole hobby for me. She inherited a large philodendron-hope plant from a friend. In the Summer months, it lives on our front porch. They thrive with in-direct light, and the covered porch is great for it. During the colder weather though, it lives inside the house, and has grown quite large. The branches reach out quite wide and the leaves are almost 18" long. It was placed on a small red table that we have had for almost 20 years. The request was for a tall plant stand that would bring 'Phil' higher, so that we could actually walk under the leaves more easily and they wouldn't be in the way so much. The plant stand would look nicer in our living room - dining room area anyways. Okay, let me find a design!

I figured a plant stand was a simple enough project that I would be able to use a design from Steve Ramsey's collection. Of course he had something I could use as a base design.

Shop Stool design from Steve Ramsey
https://woodworkingformeremortals.com/basic-shop-stool/

My design would be a bit different. I had a few things in mind to make it a bit snazzier. I still had purple heart and padauk wood left over from my cutting boards. I asked The Boss which she would like me to use for the table top, and she chose the purple heart. The other modification I was going to incorporate were homemade dowels. Wooden dowel pegs can be bought at any hardware store, but they are lightweight pine, and are not attractive. I had seen some videos where people made their own dowels with a table saw, a drill and a chisel. I was going to do that with the purple heart!

The plant stand was going to sit about 40" high, with the rest of the basic dimensions from Steve's plan being the same. The legs would be about 14" wide, so the table top would be 16" across. One of the great things about Steve's plan is it uses 2x4's as the source material for the legs. Nothing special, just regular pine 2x4's, ripped down the middle. I already had that, so this was going to be another project with very little cost.

The source materials, which I already had in my lumber cart

The first task was to cut the purple heart boards in half. They were too thick for what I wanted the table top to be. They were split in half, which gave me more wood to make the table top. With a table top that would be 16" across, I would need the boards to be all leveled before gluing, because my planer can only handle an infeed of 12.5" wide. I ran them through my planer separately with the resulting thickness being about 1". They were then laid on my pipe clamps and squeezed together over night with TiteBond3 wood glue. I had also used cauls when gluing the boards. Cauls are boards that are placed above and below the wood being clamped, and they are pressed with their own set of clamps. It keeps the purple heart boards from slipping vertically as they are squeezed horizontally. The glue makes the boards slippery, so the cauls keep the purple heart pieces all sitting flat.

Before gluing, with the cauls laid across the purple heart

After the glue has dried

Once the glue had dried, the surface needed to be sanded smooth. Sanding purple heart super sucks. The reason is that the wood is so darn hard, that even the roughest sandpaper takes forever to remove material. I had sanded for about an hour and still had waves in the boards, despite planing the wood and clamping with cauls. Still, it would have been worse otherwise. I couldn't keep running the sander, because I risked creating uneven parts on the surface. Time to break out the router sled.

I had used the router sled on my end-grain cutting board, and decided it would come in handy here. It would allow me to slide my router above the surface of the project and remove a very small amount of wood, while the router rests on rails - never sitting on the uneven surface of the project piece.

My make-shift router sled that saved the day

With the surface of the table top generally smooth, and even all over, the next step was to really sand it smooth and get a nice baby-butt finish. I should have used the router sled the previous day, and saved myself a few hours of sanding frustration. Another lesson learned. If something super sucks, there's probably a better way.

After smoothing the surface, the edges were trimmed to make the table top perfectly square.

I put the table top aside and began working on the frame of the table. This design incorporated a joint type I hadn't had an opportunity to use properly yet, the half-lap joint. It's strong and pretty simple to do. There are many ways to make a half-lap joint, and I was going to use my table saw for this one. Before that, I needed to cut all my pieces to the right sizes. Steve's plan was used to for the dimensions, with a height modification for the long legs. Due to the source material being simple 2x4's, the surface of the wood was not ideal. It was crappy actually. It needed to be smooth and even. I brought out the planer and ran all the boards through many times to get all sides smoothed out and level - and equal with the others. 

After the boards were cleaned up with the planer, it was time to make the half-lap joints. It involved cutting a dado, or a channel in the board, that was half-way though, on both joining boards. When they are put together, it results in a joint that is even with both boards. I used my table saw to cut the dados. In some places, there were slivers of wood remaining, which was removed with a chisel. 

The other part of this joint was the rabbet - or a dado at the end of a board. The horizontal boards would have rabbets that would sit in the dados of the vertical boards. The fit was all tested and everything aligned (after a few additional cuts were made). It was time to glue the frame together. My squeeze clamps were a couple inches too short, so I first clamped the lower horizontal pieces, then I glued the top ones that would be holding the table top.  

After the glue dried, I decided to add a nice corner to the boards. The sharp edges that were made by the planer were not nice to touch, so a 45° angle was added to the edges, called a chamfer. The router was used, and it had the necessary chamfer bit. I applied it to all the outer edges.

After that, I decided to tackle the challenge of making my own dowels with hardwood purple heart. The process was supposed to be simple - but I didn't account for the stubbornness of purple heart. It simply wouldn't cooperate. It would chip too much when spinning against the chisel. I gave up on that method, and researched another way. I found what I needed at 3x3 Custom. Her method involved using a router table with a simple round-over bit. Slide the wood over the round-over bit a few times and the wood will be round and pretty smooth. It worked! 

Making purple heart dowels with a router table and a round-over bit

The dowels were fairly round, but not perfectly smooth. Also, they ended up being a bit larger than I wanted. Despite that, I had something to work with. I shoved the dowel rods into my drill, which was clamped to my workbench. Sandpaper was wrapped around the dowel rod and I ran the drill. It sanded the dowel much faster than I could have done by hand. The dowels were cut into pieces and were glued and pounded into holes that were drilled into the half-lap joints. 

The chamfer wasn't even on the left leg in this image, but was corrected later. Purple heart dowels were added to the joints.

The orbital sander was used to smooth out the dowels so they would be flush with the wood. This was another occasion that a Japanese flush-cut saw would have come in handy. 

After the sanding was complete, it was time to think about joining the table top to the base. There are a few ways to do this, but one warning kept coming up as I researched this - allow for expansion. Your wood table top will expand and contract over the course of the year, as the air in your home gets humid in the summer and ultra-dry in the winter. This will cause the wood to expand and contract by the tiniest of measurements - but enough to cause it to crack if it is prevented from moving. If the table top were glued to the base, this would surely have happened. After some research, I found figure-8 fasteners would do the trick. They allow the wood to expand and contract, while holding the table top securely to the base. My typical big-block hardware stores didn't sell these fasteners, but Lee Valley Tools did, and luckily I had time to visit them. As I mentioned on my Facebook post that afternoon, it was a good thing I didn't have my credit card with me. That store is awesome, and their products are great. Anyways, I drove across town to buy a $5 bag of fasteners. The router was used to make small notches for the faster to rest in, flush with the top of the frame. The reason these work is because the expansion and contraction of the wood can be allowed by the figure-8 swiveling on the single screw that holds the fastener to the frame. 

After the table top was secured to the frame, I added my mark to the project with the branding iron. It looks really nice on purple heart!

The last stage was to apply the finish. Simple water-based clear varathane would suffice. The first coat was applied, sanded by hand very lightly with 220 grit, then another coat was applied. Sanded again with 220, and then a final coat applied. The result was wonderful. The purple heart dowels are darker than I would have preferred, and that was a result of them getting very hot from the sanding process. Purple heart gets dark easily when heated, but the dowels still have a purple tint in them.

This project cost me the 5 bucks for the fasteners, but I also learned how to make my own dowels. I learned that I really like chamfered edges, and clear varathane is super easy to apply (my glue stains don't show up!).

Phil on the new plant stand