20ft long Wedding Table
Justin, 2019Last minute signup to a big project
Two weeks before our wedding, I decided to go to the lumber yard in Santa Fe. My father in law and I thought the front doors of the house could do with an upgrade from the ply shell to a solid, ornamental stile and rail door.
We found some nice pieces of doug fir for the door, but next to it... a huge, 4” thick and 20+ft long slab of doug fir. We had already done seating plans for round tables, but I had to buy this and make a wedding party table.
It was rough sawn, definitely too big for the planer. I ended up using a makita power plane and a manual plane. I realise I probably should have built a router sled, but with a timeline of 2 weeks, this worked well enough. A lot of planing and sanding later, I had a nice table top.
I also bought a few nice big slabs to make the trestle legs. These were lag bolted together then glued into rabbets.
A few days before the wedding, it was still not finished. Guests were arriving and I was still doing glueups and sanding. My uncle Ralph came by from a woodcarving trip and hopped in to help. It took 8 wedding guests wearing fancy clothes and sandals to move it from the front yard, through the house, and onto the back verandah.
The finished table:
The table moved with us to Albuquerque and now lives in the backyard.
