Completing the Circle!

Saturday was a catch up day for me.  Between baseball and turkey season, I have had very little time to get any work done in the shop or any work done in the yard.  My wife had an eye appointment on Saturday morning so I volunteered to stay home with the kids while she went, so that meant no turkey hunting.  It has also been spring break for the kids, so we gave them an off day from baseball practice, so that meant no baseball.  What was a man to do???  Get some work done!!

After I got the yard tended to, I turned my attention to my little circle topped table.  All I lacked from getting it finished was the four legs.  I always do the legs last because they are definitely the least fun part of the table to tackle.  The picture above shows me carefully sanding each spindle.  You can see the changes in color as I work my way down.  Each leg was sanded twice.  The first with a medium finish sand paper and the final with a fine finish.  This table had no paint on it, only a coat of old stain.  It made the work much easier.

I decided to give this table a coat of stain to help bring out the Tiger Oak finish.  Once I had the legs sanded and cleaned, I applied a coat of pre-stain conditioner, followed by my stain.  I chose Provincial by Minwax.

We waited on the stain to completely dry and filled the time by breaking out the ping-pong table.  Reid enjoys playing and actually has gotten pretty god at volleying back and forth we me.  It was now time to start putting everything together.

I will never understand why people fill these little tables with nails in order to try and strengthen them.  I find that a good dose of wood glue does the trick just fine.  Here the table has been put back together and glue has been filled in the slots.  The bottom shelf has been screwed back into place in order to set the legs in their proper places.  Now all I have to do is apply the final finish to the legs.

The end result!!

I think it is one of the prettiest pieces that I have done.  I may just have to keep this one for myself unless someone wants to make me a ridiculous offer on it.  Let me know what you think!