Having seen someone make a wooden bench using only a chainsaw and a sledgehammer, with no nails or screw, I thought I'd have a go, but making a table for use at the camp in the woods rather than a bench. As it was my first attempt I decided to use an old piece of sweet chestnut I'd had sitting around for a few years.
First I raised it up off the ground:
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Then used the chainsaw to rip it down the middle, cross-cutting when I had a long enough section:
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Then I put the two pieces side by side on some bearers. I flipped one of them round though, so that the combined width of the two of them is about the same all the way along.
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To get them to fit together nicely, I then used the chainsaw to rip along the gap between them, then push them together. Having repeated this a few times I got a nice fit:
The next step was to make a 'dovetail joint'. I made two cuts with the chainsaw like this:
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Then used a bore (or plunge) cut, followed by a bit more fiddling around with the saw to get it looking like this. You can see I've also used the saw to roughly shape a wedge of wood to go into the gap as well:
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Having inserted the wedge into the gap, I then used the chainsaw to carefully rip along both sides of the wedge, taking care to take wood off the wedge rather than the table top logs.
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Having repeated that several times, the wedge now fitted nicely:
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After using the sledgehammer bang it securely into place, I then used the chainsaw to trim off surplus wood, so it looked like this:
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Then did it all over again at the other end:
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For the legs, I used the chainsaw to rip another log in half, and made four pieces like this:
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Then I used a bore cut with the chainsaw to make holes in the table top, trimmed the tops of the legs, and hammered them through the holes:
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Here it is with four legs in place:
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Of course, when I turned it over it was far from level!
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But a bit of trimming on the ends of the legs got that sorted:
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The final step was then to use the saw to cut off the bits of leg poking through the top, and tidy up any rough spots:
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Next time I make one I'll video it...
Mike
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