Conference table one.

[jensen87]

The new principal at my school asked me if I could build a conference table to go in our school's guidance office. So I began to brainstorm and came up with a project to do at the end of the school year with my students. Here are our results.

The table top started as 2" thick red oak and was glued together in two sections and then glued together to give us a blank that was 4'x8'x2". We surfaced both sides using our PRT Alpha 96. Then we sprayed both sides with poly to try to stabilize the wood. Next we carved our design and text with a flat dept of .125. Following the carving we cut the oval profile, sanded the edges and one more coat of poly. Next we applied dark walnut gel stain to the carved areas. The poly prohibited the stain from bleeding and it gave us crisp definition of the design. Then we used Envirotex Lite Pour On High Gloss Finish to level the carved area with the top of the table.

The principal was very pleased wit the project and has already asked for another with a different logo for the main office.

[chiloquinruss]

What a great project. The students are even smiling! Well done! Russ

[myxpykalix]

Mike,
Girls in woodshop? That's great! It looks like they applied the stain for the lettering with small brushes as opposed to just wipe on/wipe off fill the area type application.
Tell them we all are proud of their efforts and they did a great job...

[jensen87]

Yes, Jack. I generally have around 4-8 girls in a woodworking class. They have much better fine motor control and much more patience than their male counterparts. They did use small brushes in the carved area to apply the stain and then used a rag to wipe the top clean of stain.

[myxpykalix]

Well tell them we think they do better work then those "stinky boys"!

[bryan]

Great project, hope this get everyone in class dreaming of new projects they can do for their family's and or friends.