THE TRADE SECRETS OF BUILDING YOUR OWN TABLE TREE

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Test the filled breaks with a fingernail and, when they're hard enough, begin working the surfaces of your slab of hardwood with a sander. (Start with an old disk, beft, or pad of rather coarse paper and — as they wear out and clog upwork your way down to a very fine grade of sandpaper.)

Seal the sanded wood with any good commercial wood sealer. If it raises the grain, sand the wood again with a fine paper and apply another coat of the sealer. Continue this alternating operation until your tabletop is "as slick as a duck's beef" . . . then wax its surface with a true paste wax. Let the wood soak up the paste for a few days, then wax it again. The glossy-smooth finish should now be permanent.

Slab tables and stools look best when their legs are put on at splayed out" angles . . . and the bigger the table, the more those legs should splay. Experiment a little. Try different logs and different angles before you make a final decision. Although you'll probably wind up slanting the legs about four to five degrees . . . you'll never know exactly what suits you best until you try a variety of ideas.

Most lumberyards and a good many hardware stores stock ready-made birch, maple, and cherry logs for just this kind of project. Or you can carve, whittle, or turn your own logs on a lathe if you prefer . . . depending on the tools and hardwood you have at your disposal.

Try legs 17 inches long for a cocktail table and 22-inchers for an end table. The best way to mount 'am is by simply drilling holes into the underside of the slab top that the upper ends of the supports will just fit into snugly . . . and then hammer 'em in, That way there's no messy glue or screws that can get lost to tool with and the legs can be removed for moving and storage.

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