Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
Built this for a friend about 2 years ago. A bit over 8' long with the simple slide-in leaves in place. plain sawn red oak that I planed to 7/8. the extra eighth makes a noticeable difference in weight and feel. Golden oak stain with 5 coats of Zar self leveling matte oil-based poly. Tried to talk her into tung oil, but the kid factor won out. The matte finish is actually quite nice when rubbed out. Little or no reflection but glass-smooth touch.The two most challenging aspects of this build were 1. Keeping track of all the boards during glue-up and breadboarding to ensure that each board maintained its identity end to end. OK, I will admit to being easily distracted, and had to re-rip one leaf to properly rearrange the boards. Lesson learned: index and mark up your glue-ups reeeal good. And 2. Getting good glue joints on 9' long boards. I don't have a jointer, so I carefully tuned the table saw for good rips and then shot the boards by hand – a simple process of booking two boards to be joined, and shooting them with a Baily #5 followed a #7. They actually turned out seamless and that was the most gratifying part of the project. It also introduced me to the joys of a sharp, well tuned plane. But that's another story
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