Enjoying a meal at a handcrafted dining table can be one of a woodworker's great pleasures. Here, in his new book, Kim Carleton Graves, one of America's top woodworkers, provides plans and instructions for building dining tables that would make any woodworker proud.

The dining tables range in difficulty from a simple trestle table to a formal veneered table. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced woodworker, Dining Tables provides plenty of challenges to increase your skills and give you a range of projects for various lifestyles.

Dining Tables provides:

• attractive, practical projects that are accessible to most woodworkers above the novice level
• projects in a variety of different styles, such as Country, Shaker, Traditional Colonial, and Queen Anne, so you are bound to find something that you want to build
• a chapter on general construction strategies that shows you the principles involved in building dining tables; you also get what you need to know to develop successful designs of your own
• detailed cut lists to help you get started and measured drawings that illustrate the finer points of construction

Dining Tables is part of the Taunton Furniture Projects series. The other books are:

Bookcases
Desks
Tables
Beds
Chests of Drawers

INTRODUCTION

TABLE-BUILDING BASICS

KITCHEN TABLE

TRESTLE TABLE

VINEYARD TABLE

EXPANDING RECTANGULAR TABLE

EXPANDING RACETRACK OVAL TABLE

EXPANDING PEDESTAL TABLE

QUEEN ANNE TABLE

MODERN ROUND TABLE

BOAT-SHAPED PEDESTAL TABLE

APPENDIX 1: FINISHING

APPENDIX 2: BUYING WOOD

SOURCES OF SUPPLY

FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS

What could be more essential to a home than a dining table? The table is the "board" in "bed and board," that catchphrase of domesticity. People have been eating at tables for 3,000 years, since they gave up nomadic life for the comforts of home. I suspect the human brain is hardwired to prefer sharing meals with family and friends to hunkering down with takeout food in front of the TV.

Of course, we use our dining-room tables for purposes other than dining. Mine tends to become an extra desk. Others are pressed into service as conference tables, card tables, or work tables. This sort of thing has probably been going on for 3,000 years as well. A good dining table is a versatile piece of furniture.

There's nothing new under the sun. All of the issues in this book are as ancient as the table itself: how to make the table beautiful, how to make it big enough (but not too big), and how to make it strong.

The earliest pictures of tables show elaborate decorations and carvings. The Romans carved table legs in the shapes of animals, both real and imaginary. They made their tables into showpieces, as we continue to do today. The size of dining tables and their role in entertaining guests make them a focus for display.

We also know that people have been worrying for centuries, if not longer, about how to feed a throng. In the Middle Ages, feudal lords just set up extra tables in the dining hall when the odd hundred knights came riding across the plain for a visit. As early as the 15th century, the English invented an expanding table. The "draw table" had three tabletops stacked one on top of another, and the lower two could be pulled out to lengthen the table.

Another preoccupation over the course of history has been keeping tables from collapsing when they were moved or loaded down with food. The trestle table was an early solution to this problem, followed by the stretcher table, and then by apron and pedestal tables.

In this book, I will address all of these issues. The first chapter, Table-Building Basics, provides technical information about sizing tables and about building tables that will survive the stresses of wood movement and of domestic life, and also discusses aesthetic design issues. The nine projects illustrate a range of historical styles, from 17th century through modern, and of solutions to technical problems, as worked out by myself and six other craftsmen. You will find tables that can be knocked down, folded up, and expanded; you will find tables held steady by trestles, pedestal assemblies, cross braces, and aprons.

I've also included a variety of construction techniques -- solid wood, veneer over sheet goods, and veneer over a torsion box. Woodworking lore and techniques that are applicable to many of the projects are scattered throughout the book, so it's a good idea to read through the book even if you're only planning to make one or two of the tables.

I hope there is something here for everyone. But if you don't find exactly the table you want to build, use the book as a reference source when you design and build your own table. Even though the problems are old, you can always find new solutions to them. Once you understand the principles of table design and the basic techniques for building, the possibilities for invention are endless.