I'm keen to spend as much time outside as possible this summer. With the deck done, it is time to turn my attention to some furniture and the first port of call is a nice table.
I could just buy one, but that would be cheating. Besides, I've got a few sleepers left over from an earlier project so I thought I'd turn those into something special for Christmas. Instead of going for a big chunky table of whole sleepers, I've decided to rip the sleepers into planks and make something with a slightly lighter look. This means being a bit selective about which sleepers I use. I chose sleepers with as few knots as possible and with a nice straight grain. If I do this I am confident of getting some good sound planks.
A few years ago I cut a sleeper into 25mm thick planks with my skill saw for a project and I had one plank left over. The spare spent most of the time in the weather and I was impressed with how well it kept its form; nice and straight and no cupping or splitting which is actually what I expected.
The table is 2.2m long and has a slatted top to allow the moisture to run through. The slats are braced from underneath and the whole thing is framed, glued and screwed. The base is a simple trestle in case I want to pack it away during winter. Plus making a trestle is a lot less work, and at this time of the year I'm all into that.