Argh....Tear Out

I had spent some time trying to find three boards that would look good for the top. Unfortunately, when I started flattening the boards I realized there was so much twist in the middle board that I would have to remove a considerable amount of material. My choices were to either rip down the center of the middle board resulting in five boards of odd shapes or to select a new board. There were not many boards that match up but i did find one that will work.

Once the boards were flattened and edged on the jointer and planer I then looked to see how they fit together. They were slightly off so I cleaned them up with my jack plane leaving a very smooth surface and they fit together great. I then glued them up.

The problem came when I went to clean up the top. The boards were slightly off so I grabbed the jack plane and planed the top so the glued edges were smooth and removed all of the benchtop planer marks. Unfortunately, I ended up with some tearout in a couple of spots....Ugh. The tear out seemed fairly deep so I asked a couple of forums on what to do. I received great advice and ended up tuning up my card scraper that was sitting in the bottom of a bunch of tools. The thing worked great at removing almost all of the tear out and any scratches or ripples. Here is a picture of the top. I still need to make a jig for the bandsaw to cut the top into a circle.















My next step after completing the top is to clean up the legs of the table. Once that is complete I will cut the mortise and tenons and half laps in the lower stretcher, cut the arch in the lower strecher and do the dovetails in the upper stretcher. Still a lot to do but I was able to make great progress over the last two days.