Walnut Dining Trestle Table: Stretcher

While the most joinery occurs in the leg assemblies of this trestle table, its the stretcher that makes the whole design work. Resisting racking forces and providing a stable base all depends on the stretcher.

The stretcher joins the legs via a large scale through tenon that benefits from some drawbored pins as do most large scale joints, 

We are gonna use that same draw boring for the feet and the bridal joint,

Walnut Dining Trestle Table: Legs Part 2

This about where we left off on the legs.

Cutting this bridal joint is fun and exacting all at the same time.  You can see the kerfs I use to relieve the waste.  The final removal can be done via chisel or a bandsaw.  Layout marks indicate orientation.  Cross grain cuts are all knifed to score fibers.

 The leg assemblies are joined via a centrally located stretcher that sits in a thru tenon cut into the upright of each leg.  Here is the layout,

The corresponding tenon is cut using a router and router board, here we are sizing the tenon:

Its easy to resolve to beating this joint together but far more productive to slowly work on the fit, there is no hiding a sloppy fit on a thru tenon: