Solid Sheesham Dining Table

Details

A dining table in solid sheesham, Dalbergia sissoo, from the Saharanpur timber belt: a 25 mm top of edge-joined 150 mm staves on a drawbored mortise and tenon base. The cheat on a dining table is the top, because it is the largest and most expensive piece of timber in the house and the easiest to fake. A veneered particleboard top with a solid wood edge band reads as solid until you look at the end grain, where the pattern stops. The second is the fixing. A solid wood top 750 mm wide moves about 4 mm across its width between a dry February and a wet August, and a table whose top is screwed rigidly to the apron will either split the top or pull the screws out, which is why the fixing has to allow movement and why so many tables crack across a stave in their second monsoon.

• 25 mm solid Dalbergia sissoo top, edge-joined from 150 mm staves, no veneer and no edge band hiding a core
• End grain visible on all four edges, which is the check a veneered top cannot pass
• Base joined with drawbored mortise and tenon, apron to leg, no knock-down fittings
• Top attached with figure-of-eight fasteners, eight on the 4-seater and ten on the 6-seater, which hold it down and let it move
• Kiln-dried to 8 to 10 percent under IS 287, pin-metered before dispatch
• Fully cured waterborne polyurethane, VOC under 50 g per litre, with eight heavy metals tested to IS 9873 Part 3, so food on the bare table is not a problem
• Ships in two pieces, the base assembled and the top separate, joined with eight bolts in about fifteen minutes
• The top will move with the season and a faint line may open at a stave joint in a dry month and close again in a wet one. That is solid timber behaving correctly. A 120 cm table seats four in comfort and six only at a squeeze.