Choosing and Preparing the Oak

For a side table roughly 600 mm wide, 400 mm deep and 700 mm high you need surprisingly little timber, so buy the best you can afford. Look for kiln-dried European or English oak at 8–10 per cent moisture content: a 27 mm board for the top and a 50 mm board for the legs and aprons. Reject anything with shake, large knots or wildly interlocked grain, though a little figure in the top is a pleasure worth paying for.

Let the boards rest in the workshop for a fortnight before you cut them. Oak moves as it settles, and rough-sawn stock is far easier to flatten than a finished component that has cupped overnight.

Everything begins with a face side and face edge. Plane one face flat with a fore plane set for a coarse cut, working diagonally across the grain, then refine with a smoother and fine shavings. Check for wind with a pair of winding sticks and for straightness with a long straightedge. Plane one edge square to that face, verify with a try square, and mark both surfaces with the carpenter's face mark. Every measurement you take from here on comes off those two surfaces, so give them the time they deserve.

Reading the Drawing and Making a Cutting List

A measured drawing is only useful once it is translated into timber. Draw the table full size on a sheet of MDF or hardboard — a rod — and mark every shoulder line, joint centre and taper directly from it. Working at full size removes a whole class of arithmetic slips and gives you something you can hold a component against as you cut.

From the rod, write out a cutting list. For this table:

• Four legs, 45 mm square, 690 mm long
• Two long aprons, 20 mm thick by 90 mm wide, 500 mm long
• Two short aprons, 20 mm thick by 90 mm wide, 300 mm long
• One top, 25 mm thick, 600 mm by 400 mm

Cut everything a few millimetres oversize in length and width, label each piece in pencil, and stack it flat with sticks between the boards. Oak left lying about in a warm room will twist before you get back to it.

Cutting the Legs and Chopping the Mortices

Bring the legs to finished size, then lay out the joints from the rod. Set a mortice gauge to 10 mm and mark both the mortice width and its position from the face side and face edge — never from the opposite faces, or any error in thickness will show up in the joint.

Chop the mortices 60 mm deep. Start with a mortice chisel, registering the bevel in the middle of the waste, and chop from both faces towards the centre so the edges stay crisp. Bore out the bulk of the waste with a brace and bit if you have one, then pare back to the gauge lines. A sharp chisel and light mallet blows will beat brute force every time. Test the depth with a marked twist drill or a scrap of dowel.

Tenons, Tapers and a Dry Assembly

Cut the tenons to match, 10 mm thick and 55 mm long, with a haunch left on the top edge to stop the apron twisting. Knife the shoulder lines from the rod rather than measuring, saw the cheeks with a tenon saw to the waste side of the line, and clean up with a shoulder plane until the joint pushes home with firm palm pressure. If it needs a mallet, it is too tight.

Taper the legs on the two inside faces, beginning below the apron and running from 45 mm down to 28 mm at the foot. Plane them with a jack plane, checking against a straightedge as you go, and keep the tapers identical by working from the same rod marks.

Assemble the whole base dry. Measure the diagonals across the carcase: if they match, the frame is square. Number every joint in pencil before you take it apart — you will thank yourself later.

Gluing Up and Fitting the Top

Glue up in stages. Join the two leg-and-apron assemblies first, check each for square, and leave them overnight. Then bring the four sides together, clamping gently and measuring diagonals again before the glue grabs. Wipe squeeze-out with a damp cloth, not a wet one, or you will raise the grain and stain the oak grey.

Fix the top with buttons or slotted holes in corner blocks, never glue it across the grain. A solid oak top 400 mm wide will move several millimetres between seasons, and a rigid fixing will split it. Let it sit for a day before final trimming so it can settle.

Planing, Scraping and Finishing

Flush the joints, then approach the finished surface carefully. A finely set smoothing plane followed by a cabinet scraper leaves oak better than abrasive paper ever will, but sanding to 180 grit is acceptable if you prefer. Do not go finer than that: polished oak takes up oil poorly and looks lifeless.

Raise the grain with a lightly dampened cloth, let it dry, and denib. Then apply three thin coats of Danish oil or boiled linseed oil thinned with white spirit, wiping off the surplus after twenty minutes. Finish with a coat of wax and buff it with a cloth. Set the table somewhere dry, stand back, and enjoy a piece of furniture that will outlast most of what you could have bought.