Yellow Cedar Patio Table

Gallery Finished Projects
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Design in Fusion 360. Material Yellow Cedar 2x6. Finish boiled linseed oil. No fasteners, only interlocking joints and glue. Top aligned to legs with dowel, separable from leg assembly for transport and storage.

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Fig 1. Photo
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Fig 2. Interlocking Leg Joint
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Fig3. Splined Crisscross Joint
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Fig 4. Interlocking Tabletop Rim
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Fig 5. Tabletop Structure (upside down)
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Fig 6. Completed Tabletop (upside down)

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Wow, very impressive. Is it your own design?
You mentioned glue but also ability to take it apart. Did you glue the table top but not the legs?

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ChrisM, Thanks for your comment!

I got the idea for the crisscross legs from The Wood Whisperer but I altered the spline to make it able to be milled out in the same setup as the outline and the half lap joints. The top is somewhat similar in appearance to a commercially marketed bar table that I saw online. But the implementation is mine, I built the Fusion 360 model from scratch and setup the toolpaths.

All the joints are glued, so the leg structure is not separable. The top is not attached to the structure, but sits on top and is aligned by a dowel between the two. So for transport or storage they can be separated, but the envelope of the leg structure is still large.

If I were to make another version, I might improve the design to not glue the crisscross joint but find a way to still make it strong. That way it could be disassembled to 3 flat parts.

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Very nicely done, especially the joints. I think you would get A LOT out of this book. You can find it everywhere.

In my career I found that sometimes if you look at what master craftsmans did before you, you can come up with new ideas.
Pony

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Two thumbs up! Obviously you know your way around Fusion 360! Where did you learn about all the compound joints? Very impressive. I am interested in learning some basic cabinetry design for CNC (using VCarve) and having some good resources for joint design would be helpful.

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Here is one online resource I have bookmarked:

50 Digital Wood Joints

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Thanks for all the kind remarks. Constructive criticism would also be welcome, let’s learn together.

The online resource ChrisM linked was my Inspiration for the interlocked joints. I made a rectangular table for the deck 2 years ago and learned a lot of practical details. One key item is finding the right amount of clearance between the mating parts. A perfect dry fit sometimes has a problem of swelling a bit when the glue is applied, then it’s difficult to assemble.

The book Pony suggested looks great, thanks. I think I’ll check the library of my local woodworkers guild. Sometimes developing an adaptation of a classic joint for CNC gets the creative juices flowing. For some time I’ve been thinking about adapting my table for edge mounting boards so I can experiment with edge joinery.

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Maybe because I’m a woodworker, but I can’t help thinking the bottom is much more interesting than the top. I would flip that table top and do a dado joint for the legs. That way it could be disassembled into 3 parts and flat packed/stored. Love the work that’s gone into it.

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Wow - that’s a terrific resource. Thank you!

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Charles Anderson - Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions. This is what I like about a good discussion in an informed forum with people of varying experience. As a woodworker I’m short on experience and particularly appreciate suggestions for improvement. My responses:

  1. Visible Joinery. This is a matter of taste. My initial thoughts were that some might find visible joinery to be too aesthetically noisy, but I think I could find ways to both make the joinery more visible and pleasing, and improve the structural integrity of the top (the engineer in me is still prominent). I’m going to take that as a challenge and chew on it a while.
  2. Unglued dados for the leg/top interface. This is a great suggestion, and could be a major improvement. Obviously the CNC is a great tool for making the dados accurately. Assembling the top to the legs would be a lot easier than trying to find the dowel with the table top. In fact, I will likely add the dados to the existing top even with the fixed legs. I do have a good amount of storage space, but I still might replace the legs with separable ones and repurpose the wood from the first prototype to some other project entirely. Giving up the splines reduces the strength of the leg structure, but there is still plenty of material left.

I love that the audience is becoming a design team. At some point I will incorporate these ideas and release version 2.0 of the table, even though I have no need for a second patio table. I will share the Fusion model with the forum at that point.

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Wow!!!
I wish I had that talent to work Fusion 360……I have a hard enough time with Carveco

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This is awesome, so impressive! When I saw this I made the comment to my wife that some people are so talented, I wish I could get to be half this creative.

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Thanks for all the kind remarks. Constructive criticism would also be welcome, let’s learn together.

Cool and looks like a nice, finished product!
My constructive criticism would be that the whole design looks over engineered.
You don’t mention it (or maybe I missed it) but the overall machining time here I would guess exceeds multiple hours. Not to mention the work of swapping material and or bits, fixturing, alignment etc.

I say this from personal experience and my own discovery that all of the above kills the joy of CNC’ing for me. What I’ve tried to do is to find a way to stay in the zone of designing for CNC’ing efficiency.

Not meant to discourage just what stood out to me.