This “Ask DIwYatt!” is a new concept for LovingHere. For any questions that you ask, I’ll do my best to answer. If any of the terms or tips in these sound like a foreign language, don’t worry Melissa is learning with you. And if you need any clarity or more pictures or videos, just let me know and I’ll do what I can to explain.

I didn’t get to talk about how I made the base for our Farmhouse Table, so I wanted to write a follow-up.

Just like any other part of the table, the base came with several sketch drawings to determine how we wanted it to look. We made trips to several different furniture stores and did a lot of online window shopping to find a style we liked.

We landed on a mix of a few different styles of bases. We liked the look of the stretchers between the legs on either end, as well as the stretcher spanning across the middle of each stretcher.

I decided pretty early on that I would want to use both the dado and cross lap methods of joinery, the art of joint making, in this project.

Lap joints like the dado and cross lap are beneficial, because of their added glue surface and the extra stability of the joint due to the overlap of the material.

A dado (or rabbet) joint is a method where you cut a groove into one piece of material and another piece fits exactly in the groove.

This picture came from an awesome book set called Audels Carpenters and Builders Guide that Melissa got from her grandma. It is a vintage four-book set that covers pretty much anything you would ever need to build for a home. This set was published in 1960, but had an initial copyright of 1923.

This type of joint was used in the seat and arms of the bench that we refinished with the table. So I wanted to use this to help bring the pieces together.

To make the dado joint, you will need to cut a channel into one of the pieces of wood.  If you have a set of dado blades for your table saw, that is the best method to remove the material out of the channel.  Dado blades are a set of saw blades that are stacked side by side and made to remove a lot of material in each pass of the saw. Here is an example of a set from Home Depot.

I don’t have a set of dado blades, so what you would do is set the height of your normal table saw blade to the depth of the groove you are cutting.  Then make sure to mark the width of the groove. Make multiple passes until you have removed at least 75% of your material using the fence as a guide. If you don’t have a table saw, you can still use a hand saw to make the cuts for your groove, it may take a little longer though.

It looks like I am free-handing this, but I am actually using the miter fence. The miter fence slides in the groove on either side of the blade in and helps hold the work piece perpendicular to the blade. Here is an example from Rockler.

This is what the dado looked like after running through the table saw.

Then you can use a hammer and chisel to get rid of the extra material.

I intentionally cut the dado slightly shallow to accent the style of the joint.

Now for a quick guide to the cross lap. The idea is that two pieces of material are over-LAP-ing to create another strong joint that will provide ample gluing surface and  nice fit between two pieces.

This was another cool touch that  I could add to the center stretcher that would connect the stretchers on either end. Technically what I did could be classified as a halved tee lap. It is all based on the final shape of the pieces that are joined. Mine made a Tee shape while cross lap create an X shape.

The first step is to use the method I described above to create the dado. Normally you would want to remove the material that would be half of the width of the board. This allows even material between the dado and the overlap.

Next I cut the lap portion of the joint. Again, to keep the material even between the two pieces you are joining, you want to remove a corner that is the same width as the dado, and the same length as the thickness of the dado piece. If that sentence is confusing, don’t worry, it was hard to write and sound as good as it did. Below is a picture of the cut lap.

Finally you can glue and clamp them together. For added strength, I used screws and metal brackets to secure each joint for extra strength. Once it was put together, we were ready to paint it white.

We painted it to match the bench.

I hope you found this helpful, maybe enough to try it yourself.

Let me know of any other questions you may have. You can email me at Wyatt@LovingHere.com or leave a comment on any post that sparks a question. Watch for more “Ask DIwYatt!” posts in the future for instructions and how to’s.