How To Build a Picnic Table - 084

Alright, so you've got your main cut list and a couple of diagrams. Go ahead and take all your pieces, all your materials, and make the proper cuts. I may change some stuff to make it more user-friendly so it may not look exactly like this piece of paper here. But go ahead and make off all your cuts and that way we can start assembly together. Alright, so I'm taking three of the six foot 2x10s and I've just set them across a couple of sawhorses. I clamped them together this way because the materials that I got, the guys loaded this stuff up didn't care, obviously, so I got away with some pretty warped stuff. It'll be alright though. I'm using that piece of 2x4 we just cut down and putting it with the angles facing this way and just centering it on the edge. I'm going to glue this down. I'm choosing Titebond III. You can use whatever you want, just to make sure it's waterproof. And I'm actually going to put five screws into the 2x4 and into each piece of the 2x10. That'll hold it really good. I'm using some 3-inch coated decking screws. Just make sure that they're rated for outdoor use and they'll last a long time. One on each side and one right in the middle. Alright, when you put this piece on here, you want to make sure that the 2x4 face is flush with this 2x10 end grain. Reason being is because this 2x4 determines, the location of this determines the length for a couple of other pieces down the road. So make sure that this is nice and flush before you start screwing it down. Also keep in mind, I'm using 3-inch screws here and this is exactly 3 inches of material, so I like to go in on an angle and kind of hold everything together. One in the middle and four on the corners in relation to each 2x10. Once completed, each section of 2x10 should have four screws. Now this one doesn't look like it belongs to this 2x10, but like I said, I put them in on an angle. So five screws per 2x10 all the way down. Fifteen screws in this board. Maybe overkill, but this thing is going to be extremely strong. Alright, this is take four. My camera has frozen up on me twice and died on me the third time, so hopefully I can explain this. It's already built so I can't really do the whole building process, but here is the best way I've found to build these legs, this whole leg assembly. I've done a lot of these picnic tables and I still do a lot of these picnic tables, so this is what I've found to be the best. I've got a mobile cart here and I just push it up against the wall. And on my wall, let me point to it, I've got right there and right here, a mark on the wall that is 56 3 8ths of an inch in between each other. That is the distance from corner to corner where my legs need to be. So when I'm ready to build the leg assembly, I just set this in place and my legs referenced off that wall or also known as the ground, everything lines up where it needs to be. So my legs are in place, that's good. I also have a center point right here. And on both my bottom rail and top rail for the leg assembly, I found a center and made a little dot. Alright, now with, let me get this real quick. With the center point found, I can set my bottom rail in place and use a carpenter's square on the wall at my center location and move my piece left or right as needed to line up with my center point here. Now you don't have to mark up your walls like I did. I build a lot of these, so I put permanent marks on the wall. It's just a pencil. You can use masking tape. You can use whatever you want as a reference that can be easily removed. But using a wall is absolutely great. It helps so much. Alright, so I found my center point on this piece, and now I need to find out how high I need to have it. And from the top side of the bottom rail to the ground, we need 17 inches. So you can verify 17 on both sides, verify your center point, and this is in its proper location. What I do here is I roll it back, put some glue on it, and glue actually can act as a lubricant when you're trying to glue together joints. Obviously so. On my shortest, we've created a parallelogram where these two intersect. On my shortest diagonal, I just put a couple 2-inch brad nails, one on either corner of the shortest diagonal, just to hold it in place while I finish securing it. Put two on here, and two in here, and it should wiggle around. Now to secure the two boards together, I use a 3-inch coated decking screw. 3-inch decking screw. Again, on the shorter diagonal, not the long diagonal. And that really holds these two together. The next step after we assemble both of these is to come back and drill for my carriage bolts. And that will really hold everything together in the long term. And you want to do the carriage bolts on the longest diagonal. Your longer diagonal is stronger than your shorter diagonal, so we want to have the strongest diagonal with the strongest fasteners, which is the carriage bolts. All right, so this is in place along with these two legs. Now we need to work on this top piece. Again, with my center point, I can use my carpenter's square to reference off of this to find center. Once I have center, I can wiggle it as needed to find how high I need it to be. What I generally do, because everything moves just a little bit, but what I generally do is I find my highest point on my original legs here, whatever my highest point is, which on this particular setup is 29 7 8ths, then I use that as my parallel measurement off the ground. All right, so I have my distance this way, I have my distance this way, it's lined up with this. I roll the board forward, glue, glue, put it back down, and again, one brad nail over here, one brad nail over here, just to hold it in place, stop it from wiggling, because with that glue, it will want to wiggle. With it in place, one, two, three, four screws, one, two, three, four screws on either side, just to hold the top rail to the legs themselves. That's pretty much it. When you do this, make sure, obviously, you do have your 45s here, whatever angle you chose, but obviously make sure we're screwing up with our pocket hole screws, and that will make everything nice and neat. But that's the leg assembly. I apologize, I couldn't walk you through it as I built it, but my camera is a piece of junk. So, it is what it is. Now, we're ready for the next step here. All right, with the legs pretty much done, we can add the carriage bolts to really stiffen everything up and add greater longevity down the road. Remember, where our two planes intersect, we've got a parallelogram that we formed, and we're going to go on the longest diagonal, and relatively close to the corners. You don't want to get too close that you chance blowing out on one side, but I'm using a 5-16ths carriage bolt. You can use whatever size you want, so 5-16ths drill bit. And with these, you want to come with the carriage bolt from the bottom side up, and that way the nut and washer are on the inside, and all you see is the head on the outside. Also, I'm using a fender washer, a lock washer, and then just a regular hex nut. Now that we've got both of these leg assemblies built, we can go ahead and secure them to the bottom of the tabletop. The nut side in, pocket hole side in, actual leg side out. And I clamp these in place to my tabletop. Not 100% necessary, but it stops it from wiggling around just a little bit. I'm using the outdoor-rated Kreg screws here, the 2-1⁄2". Alright, now when we cut our pocket holes, the spacing that I have laid out on the diagram is so that you get three pocket hole screws into each 2x10. That's going to hold really strong. And now, clamps off, and that's pretty strong as is, without even bracing it. So, very strong connection. So I've got both leg assemblies screwed down to the tabletop, and when I cut my bottom leg rails, I also marked out where the seat support is going to be, connecting the two legs together. So I have a good reference point where to put it, and I've taken the time to clamp a 2x4 scrap piece to the bottoms of these lower leg rails. That way I can just set my seat support in place and pocket hole screw it in and that will be just fine. Remember when you do this, pocket hole screws on the inside of the table, and also when you build yours, this piece right here, the lower leg rail, is going to be out of a 2x6 according to the plans. Mine is not, simply because it was cheaper for me to do it otherwise out of some other numbers. Anyway, this is going to be a 2x6, and this piece is going to be roughly 4 inches tall, so there's going to be a slight height difference here. On mine, they're all the same height. But I can just set my seat supports in, and you may have to spread these leg assemblies out just a little bit in order for it to fit. But it will all fit nice and snug. Now make sure when you do this, that you have it in such a way that the pocket hole screws on the inside are facing down so they can screw into the actual seat. Now if you're short like me, you can sit underneath this thing and put these angle braces in. Now you want to make sure that you put it in such a way that you're not going to go through the top of the table. That's pretty strong. I want to put two in the top and then two in the bottom. I moved it outside where it's a little bit easier to manage, and one of these small, inexpensive two-wheel dollies really makes these easy to move around. But here's a good shot from the bottom, and all I lack is putting it upright, putting it in its normal position, and screwing in the seat slats from the bottom. So let me get that done real quick. There you go, a six-foot picnic table. Very strong, maybe over-engineered for some, but it'll do the job just fine. It'll last a long time so long as you keep the weather off it or treat it properly. This is going to be treated with some Thompson's Honey Gold water sealer, and that'll do the job just fine. I recommend building the whole thing out of treated lumber, but that's what this person wanted, so that's what I'm going to do. Anyway, very strong, very durable picnic table, 6 feet. And I will do another one down the road that's not as bulky, a little bit quicker and easier to make, but this one's very strong. You can do the same thing with an 8-foot, 10-foot. Now once I get up to a 10-foot length, I put a third leg right in the middle, so I'll put a picture of that with this too. But anyway, thanks for watching. Glad you stopped by. And be sure to check out some of my other outdoor furniture. I got some outdoor chairs and whatnot, but the plans and Sketchup file to this will be in the website description, or in the website write-up for this. So be sure to go over there, check it out. If you like what you see, like and subscribe, and thanks for watching.