Old and New
When it became general knowledge that I was no longer working a 9 to 5 job, some friends came to me with a request. Patricia and David were people I had known for 30 years. I met them at church and watched them get married and raise some beautiful children and then move into the empty nest stage of life. Patricia is from Columbia.
One thing she brought with her from home many years ago was an antique sewing machine and table. The treadle powered kind. For some time she had wanted to make the stand into a table and have a small box to show off the old sewing machine. They asked me if I would be willing to do that for them … and I said sure.
This antique sewing machine base was brought to Minnesota from Columbia.
They brought the prepared base over to my place and we talked about what she had in mind. She wanted a live edge to the piece and for the tabletop to be dark in color. We also agreed that it should be thicker than a ¾” board.
What kind of wood? No preference. How to treat the ends of the tabletop … make it look good. With that, it was now up to me.
I went to my local sawmill to see what they had in stock for live edged slabs at least 1-1/2” thick. To tell you the truth, that did not limit my choices at all – they literally had piles of them. After a bit I settled on a 2” rough sawn white oak slab that had some spectacular quarter sawn grain.
I ripped the big board right at the edge of the quarter sawn grain and glued the top together. It almost looked like a book match. It was a ¼” thicker than I could rip with my track saw, so I broke the piece free and cleaned up the edge with flush trimming router bit.
A bad sanding job meant that the entire tabletop needed to be sanded down to bare wood and restained.
After preparing the stock with my planer/jointer, I glued up the tabletop and then sanded it smooth. The top had a few insect voids and a small open knot that needed to be filled. I was planning on using epoxy dyed black to do so, but I was concerned about the epoxy flowing through the knot and that the void of the knot on the underside of the tabletop was even larger than on the show face. To stop the flow through and maybe save a buck, I used Bondo to fill the voids on the underside of the tabletop. I’m not really sure if I saved any money as Bondo was much more expensive than I remembered (the last time I bought any Bondo was likely 20-years ago).
The good news is that the Bondo worked and I only needed a small amount of the black epoxy resin. While sanding the top level something happened that I had been looking forward to for a few years, my super-old Porter Cable 4 x 24 belt sandere gave up the ghost. I had replaced the cord on it many times, and it smelled kinda bad when I was using it, but it just kept going and going. I am less excited about it breaking now that I have looked into the cost of current models of 4 x 24 belt sanders. Live and learn.
With a live edge and epoxy filled knot voids, this white oak tabletop was just what the customer ordered.
I kept sanding with my RO sanders, and then applied the oil-based stain. I am not a big fan of staining wood. For myself, I’ll almost never do it, but here I was making this for Patricia. When I applied the stain, I got a rude awakening. I had done a poor job of finish sanding. That required that I re-sand the entire tabletop.
The final coat of medium gloss polyurethane was applied. The polyurethane topcoat provides great protection against wear.
From there the stain went on well, I applied a few coats of shellac (with pore filler after the first two coats) and then a final coat of medium gloss polyurethane. I was pleased with the results.
The small box to display the sewing machine had an MDF core that I painted grey, and ½” thick white oak for the outside. Stain and finished as the tabletop, the job was done.
A small display box for the old sewing machine was the last task.
