Woodworking Tip #15: Pseudo Tabletop

The Table ("The Table") shown in my Oct 27, 2011 post has legs that are flared outward at two degree compound angles.  The resultant complex  sizing and positioning of all the pieces would have been a complete nightmare without a CAD program.  Further, to facilitate and check the registration of all the pieces during the fabrication I built a pseudo tabletop as shown to the left.  In each corner was placed a removable dowel.  As the top of each leg has a permanent dowel installed, the pseudo tabletop, with its dowels removed, was used to insure proper positioning of the leg assembly during glue-up.  This light and easy to manipulate board made it simple to insure that the finished tabletop would be parallel with the compact trestle base.  Then, with the dowels in place, the pseudo tabletop was used to position the holes which were bored in the table's brace rails and received the dowels glued in the top of the legs.  It was also used to set the spacing between the brace rails.  The dowels are merely to keep the legs in position while Norse latches provided the clamping force between the legs and tabletop, see:   Norse Fasteners for Tabletop.