Advancing carpentry skills

Last week Craig took his 16 foot trailer into Nashville to help with delivery of several Nashville Tools for Schools projects. While delivering a new picnic table to one school, the principal asked if the old table could be hauled away. Craig recognized that the table was easily salvageable and decided it was a good project for me (really us) to work on.

We disassembled the table and found that there was only one piece of original wood that was too warped to use as a top piece but we were able to cut it up for replacement supports for the table top. We only needed to use one piece of new lumber. I have learned to use a table top planer – a really great piece of equipment to have when working with hard weathered wood. It would have taken forever to sand the wood into a state that could be stained.

Today we will work on sanding and routing the edges before staining. I am not sure what we are going to do with the table once finished. Perhaps the school will want it back or another school would like it.