Thought I would make a slightly unusual post with a DIY theme.
I was at a local furniture dealer's warehouse having a look round for a new kitchen table and I came across some planks of English Ash which were lying around and I thought I'd challenge myself to try to turn it into a work surface/breakfast bar.
This turned out to be a significant challenge with way more things to think about than I'd realised. Its absolutely not cheap either; I am sure it would have been cheaper to just buy the final product given all the power tools I had to acquire. But in the end through sheer belligerence I managed to create a fairly decent breakfast bar.
Here's what the final thing looks like in my Kitchen
And here's how I managed to do it...
1. Buy the wood
The plank of English Ash was £80, approx size 65 x 180 cm with a thickness of 38 mm. The black mold is only on the surface; and the saw marks (vertical) are clearly visible.
I happened to just stumble across this wood; but there are plenty of places around which sell wood straight out of a mill. The best hardwood like Oak and Ash is worth the money IMHO. These planks were perfect as they were nice and thick (4cm+); I had to be careful that once cut they would be both long and deep enough (its a good idea to pick out the cupboards you want to put it on ahead of time and at least roughly know their depth).
The wood needs to be dried and this wood looks suspiciously damp with the black mould that seems to be growing on it. There are electronic devices available to measure the moisture content of wood and this turned out to be around 15%. Apparently this is perfectly fine! The final price for the wood was £80.
Summarising, aim for a piece of wood that is;
Thick (35 mm or more)
Hardwood such as Oak or Ash
Deep enough once cut (60 cm or more)
Long enough for its purpose; breakfast bar for two people 150cm at least.
2. Belt Sanding and Orbit Sanding
The first job is to smooth the surfaces of the wood to (a) remove the black mould and (b) remove the uneven saw marks created when the plane saw chopped the wood into planks. A belt sander with a coarse grained belt is best for this due to its speed. I Used it to remove the mold and saw marks, but didn't over use it as it is very powerful and quickly eats through the wood.
The plank was set up on two stands (called a saw horse, like this one) which due the weight of the wood was very sturdy.
Left : Battery powered orbit sander. Middle : Mains powered belt sander. You can see the saw blade marks as the striations running perpendicular to the grain. Wear a dust mask; I forgot for a couple of hours and could feel the dust in my lungs. Right : The grain when finished sanding.
Next the wood must be sanded to a very smooth, flat surface. The orbit sander is really the best tool for the job. I bought a battery powered one which I found worked very well. Although I found that the battery wore out before I did; and took several hours to recharge, which prolonged the whole process over several weeks.
The idea is to sand the entire surface until it "feels smooth" (you can feel the smoothness in your wrist when using the orbit sander) and then change to a smaller grit. I used the following grits in this order
60
120
240
500
1000
2000
By the time you've finished the 2000 the wood feels like its had a coat of varnish. For me this was the "magic" part of the whole process. I'd always thought the smoothness of wood was due to the product put on it but no, its mainly the grit of the sanding that's applied.
The front of the wood was left "natural"; but this still required sanding. This just involved buying some sheets of sandpaper and sanding the grooves and curves by hand, removing and sharp edges or dents.
3. Squaring the Back and Sides
The "front" of the table (the outer surface of the tree) looks really nice and has a lot of natural grooves so we decided to leave that. However, the sides will look better straight and the back needs to be flush against the wall. The challenges are then
To get the sides at a 90 degree angle to the back edge.
To get the back to fit the wall, which is not necessary a straight edge.
The second one really got me; as the walls in our old house are not even remotely straight and trying to put a straight edge against it of the length of our table looks horrendous.
The tool for the job here is an electric plane (a manual plane would take way too long). These aren't very easy to use as it turns out and it requires a lot of concentration (perhaps a manual plane is less error prone for the finer planing) to get the edge flat and straight.
Here's more or less how I did these steps:
Get a square (as big as possible) and a long straight edge (six foot spirit level will do).
Draw a straight line across the back of the plank which is as close as possible to the end of the wood.
Using the square, line up along the back edge and create a 90 degree edge along each side.
With clear pencil lines as a guide, use an electric plane or belt sander to strip away the wood down to the lines.
I then took the plank into its final position in the kitchen and realised just how curved the walls are. I had to just iterate the process of drawing some pencil lines on the wood where the curves needed to be added, planed maybe a few mms off, took the wood back and repeated. Eventually, the wood more or less fitted flush with the wall.
The above graphic illustrates just how much wood is actually lost when creating the square back and sides (left). It is also fairly accurate with regards to how much wood needed to be taken out to fit it to my curved wall (right).
5. Filling Cracks
With natural wood, there are always knots and cavities in the surface. My piece had one large knot which was full of smelly, presumably rotten, soft wood pulp mess stuff. I removed this with some scoopy tool (screwdriver will do) and vacuumed all the powdered dead wood that had accumulated. Once all the cavities were cleaned I decided to fill them with clear Epoxy (Gorilla Glue do a reasonably priced tub), I used around 50-100ml in total so needed a few packs.
When set this is completely clear and very hard and won't wear over time. There are some beautiful things that can be done with Epoxy and wood.
One mistake I made here was to mix up the epoxy very quickly so it wouldn't start setting. This introduced lots of tiny air bubbles, which set with the epoxy and ruined the look I was going for. Mix slowly and pour carefully... One or two air bubbles can be removed with a pin.
I had to make sure each of the holes was over-filled. The dried epoxy can be sanded down and will maintain its transparency. Plus, once it is set, any further epoxy added will not bond correctly so if you under fill you won't be able to correct the mistake.
There was a large split in the wood running through the wood at one side; to handle that I added some duct tape around the bottom and side of the exposed split and poured the epoxy in through the top. Once dried, the tape can be removed and the over filled epoxy sanded.
6. Applying the Finish
After the final sanding at 2000 grit with my orbit sander, the epoxy looked great (despite the bubbles I managed to accidentally introduce.
The raw wood needs some sort of treatment to both improve its look, and its durability. The finish applied to a wood can change the colour, bring out the fine detail in the grain, and result in a glossy texture. From reading around a bit I reduced the list to just two finished
Teak Oil
Howdens : Osmo Worktop Oil
A lot of finishes are discouraged for Ash as they can give the wood a "wee" yellow colour. The light coloured parts of the wood are most prone to this; but my piece was mostly slightly darker. In then end I chose the Worktop Oil, since this is a kitchen bench designed to be used for breakfast/eating and the it is Howdens use for their wood work surfaces.
I applied it evenly using a regular yellow duster and one tin was more than enough for the entire plank (I applied three coats, with one day drying in between each one and there was more than half left). The grain of the wood was more visible, and the contrast between light and dark regions was enhanced.
The effect of the worktop oil is dramatic, as in the middle image, and transforms the look of the wood. I actually don't mind the "wee" yellow colour in the lighter regions.
7. Installing
The final stage was to fix the table in place. I guess there were a few options here (attach legs, cupboard etc). I decided to buy a set of narrow cupboards from Howdens which matched my existing cupboards, to go at each end of the table and leave enough space in between for two bar stools.
Installing these cupboards required a bit more skill than I possess so I cheated and called in my father in law (a joiner) to fit the cupboards. Having watched the process, I would not recommend trying it as a beginner. Once fitted, the plank is attached to the cupboards with four screws (to be cupboard) drilled upwards through the inside top of each cupboard with a hammer drill.
There are still one or two things about this I couldn't get quite right; the depth of the plank is about 5mm too short at the near corner of this image; so the wood doesn't fully overlap the top of the door. The gap between the window ledge and wood is actually a misalignment of the window, not the table.