They say someone paved a road once with good intentions...

If you recall my last post, you may remember that I was trying to figure out whether to create the apron joinery with dowels or mortise/tenon and decided to go with the later.  This was to try to develop my skills as a woodworker and to honor the true craft and time-tested traditions - not to mention that this type of joinery would last centuries.  The problem with this approach it that it doesn't (or perhaps shouldn't) apply to those of us with young families.  In reality, my wife and I have very little spare time and a long list of projects, errands and daily tasks to attend to.  It is a rare thing if I get more than an hour or so in the shop at any given time. It just so happened that this occurred this past Sunday.  My wife and I are getting eager to have this island in our kitchen and eager for me to move on to the next project - the mantle in the living room (or is it rebuilding the back deck, or painting the veranda railing, or painting the radiators, or .....  you get the idea).  So long story short, a friend came over with her two kids and there was a 4 hour play date from which I was excused to attend to issues in the shop. 

It dawned on me just how precious those 4 hours were, and how mortise and tenon joinery although the most solid option, would likely burn the entire day.  It also became apparent that this island is not a piece of fine furniture and that no one beyond a few of my friends who woodwork actually know or care about mortise and tenon joinery.  So.... I decided in the end that I would go with pocket-hole screw joinery for the apron (I know... I know... I didn't say I was proud of it).  I have the Kreg jig, and it works great.  I was just a little nervous if it would be strong enough for 1.75" thick material.  I did a little test with scrap wood and 2.5 inch screws - the result was ok, not great.  Then I moved up to 3" screws and completed the test with glue.  Once the glue dried - rock solid, certainly good enough for the aprons.  For those who don't know, pocket hole joinery is fast and pretty straight forward so it is a great choice as a time savor.  Phew... my conscious is clear.

So before I got to the apron joinery, I began with cutting the legs to size, cutting the apron pieces to size  (without any need to extend the length for tenons as I was using pocket hole screws), and I glued up the table top.  I decided to do the tabletop glue-up in stages as I felt gluing those 5 heavy boards at once by myself was a recipe for disaster.  I glued up boards 1 and 2, then boards 4 and 5, and then these two assemblies were glued to board 3 to make the top.

For those who recall my experience gluing up the legs for my slab coffee table, where I was burned by having the glue start to set before I finished clamping, I have learned to always do a complete dry run of the clamping process before introducing the glue.  Even for a seemingly simple panel glue-up, it is so valuable to do this as you find many errors and work out clamp sizes and the order of operations before it is too late.  Here is a pic of the last tabletop glue-up just prior to and then fully clamped.  I used Tite Bond III, which is FDA approved for food contact and good for wet applications.  It also dries brown so it is a great choice for this application.  (By the way, I forgot to tape the joints for squeeze out like I did for the legs, but in the end I think it wasn't necessary).

I then got on to drilling the pockets in the apron pieces (so easy and fast with the Kreg jig, but you can't help but feel a little guilty....) and then I cut the stretchers and the 3" wide slots in the legs into which the stretchers will fit.  It was my first time using a dado stack which I purchased through a friend at work, and I must say it made the process much faster (although you do have to be wary of the increased thickness of the blade as I almost made one of the slots too wide).  I can't imagine how long it would have taken me to cut the slots if I were to nibble away at them with a single blade.  There is also a bit of a recess/cut-out in the stretchers into which the bottom shelf sits - I cut this out on the bandsaw.

So with the parts all cut and the panels glued up I did a loose assembly to see what this thing will look like.

Not bad.  I don't think the stool is going to work though, I'd actually like to find a couple of old round metal stools - there is a large antique store not far from me so I'll go hunting at some point.  The overhang on the right is intentional as we plan to have the kids eat meals here, so wanted a little overhang.  That said, I'm not sure I like the look of it, so I may decide to just center the top.  I'll need to try it out with the kids actually sitting at the island first before I decide.

The last thing I did before I had to get upstairs, was to start sanding the legs and aprons.  I went pretty light with 120 grits on my ROS.  I think its going to look good, it gave a good balance between softening the edges and retaining the reclaimed character.  I'm anxious to see how the top will look with some sanding. 

Next steps are to cut the top and shelf to size with a circular saw (while trying to avoid tear-out), cut a kerf in the aprons to receive the metal clips which will hold the top and sand the top and shelf.  Then the question is, do I assemble first or pre-finish, and also what am I going to use for finish?  Waterlox, General Finish?  hmmmm....