Transform furniture in a few basic steps

Matsutake transformed a table that was used and abused by a family of 5 for 12 years, and finally relegated to the garage. This project shows how dowels can be used to join together or add new sections to an existing piece, and dowel joints are extremely strong once glued together.

 

 

It cleaned up pretty nicely, huh? I can't believe it's the same table. It was really pretty easy. I just cut a few strips of 44 x 44mm PAR pine to make the sides. I joined all the pieces of wood with dowels.

This is my favourite way to join wood because it doesn't require any special tools other than a drill, it makes a clean joint with no hardware sticking out, and the bond is as strong as hercules.

1. Mark and measure the centre point of each piece of wood and then drill a hole to the same size as your dowel - normally 8mm.

2. Fill each drilled hole with a small bead of wood glue and push the dowel in. Don't put too much glue in or you will end up with glue squishing out all over the place.

3. drill a hole in the other piece and fill it with glue. Because all the wood is the same size (44 x 44) you don't need to use dowel centres if you mark carefully.

4. Glue and secure all the sections together and then let the wood glue dry.

NOTE: Only drill dowel holes in the outside of the new frame - don't put dowels into this holes.

Drill holes all the way through the legs of the table and slide the whole side structure in and then pop in the dowels and glue in place. After the glue dried, I filled the holes with wood filler and sanded it smooth. I also used acrylic sealer to fill in any joins and make the seams where the wood strips meet very flush. Then tons of sanding over the whole thing and about 4 coats of glossy white paint.