![]() ![]() Once I’ve selected my table top boards, I like to clean up the edges. But again, that’s my own personal preference. And a twisted board will make a twisted table top.Īlso, if I’m making a large table top, I prefer to use wider boards (so 2×8, 2×10, 2x12s)…that means less glue joints. A bowed board will make a bowed table top. If it’s twisted, DEFINITELY put it back.Ī flat board will make a flat table top. I know that seems kind of obvious, but when selecting the boards you will use for a table top whether it’s a fancy hardwood (like the walnut I showed above) or a standard 2×10 at Home Depot, eyeball down the edge of the board. However, the best advice I can give, especially if you don’t have a shop full of huge, fancy tools and a WHOLE LOT OF PATIENCE, is to start with flat boards. There are a lot of fancy methods you can use to flatten out a board or a table top. I’ve had a lot of questions about how to get a flat table top. The process is the same no matter what wood I use. But in the video above, I show this with walnut. In this tutorial, I’m showing using 2x10s. You can use any wood type you’d like and can afford for the top. I showed walnut in the pictures above, but usually, to save quite a bit of money, I will use 2x8s, 2×10, or 2×12 construction lumber for my tops and just stain them my desired color. Hardwoods are fairly expensive depending on where you live and what’s readily available. Here’s a dining table build video that shows the process with these walnut boards if you’re interested. A table saw is handy, and if you need to trim it, a circular saw is useful as well. All you need are some pipe clamps and glue. I’ve made SEVERAL tops like what I’m about to show you and it is simple and by far my favorite way to make a table top. So, if you want to make a thicker top, you can just glue 1xs together like this to make it thicker. You can see the process in this DIY dining table video. Then, I ran them through the table saw to get the sides even and smooth (which is step 1 below). To do this, I planed all the boards smooth, then laminated (just glued) them together to make thicker boards like this. However, I recently built a dining table and used 4/4 (basically rough 1xs) walnut boards to make a 2x top. (Just another reason not to make table tops with 1xs.) And 2xs are MUCH easier to glue than 1xs. Please see disclosure policy for more details.Īnd as much as I LOVE my Kreg Jig, I prefer gluing tops together vs screwing with with pocket holes. Note: This post contains affiliate links. Otherwise, they just seem flimsy, weak, and insufficient. I’m far from an expert table top maker, but I typically avoid table tops made from 1xs, except when I built my own dining table…but that was part of the design element. So first I have to get this off my chest. I’ll show you how easy it is to build a table top for your DIY furniture projects in this post. ![]() Making table tops shouldn’t be intimidating. ![]()
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