146VIDEO Picnic Table Plans Tour

In this video I want to give you some tips on building a picnic table that's

part of the course. Start by looking near the bottom. This is the end view and it

shows what I call the end frames. So made up of the legs, top cross piece, bottom

cross piece, and another leg. The other parts you see here, the seat parts, top

parts, the diagonal brace, they don't enter into the side frames. The first

thing you're going to want to do is to build your side frames. Build one and then

build a second one on top of the first one so that they're both exactly the

same. And that's your starting point. The best way to put these frames together is

to cut the parts as you see here and as described in the instructions, but then

put them together initially with some glue, outdoor rated glue, weatherproof glue, and a couple of deck screws per joint. Now those deck screws will not be

sufficient to hold that frame together when the picnic table's in use, but they

are convenient. You can place the parts exactly where you want them to. They're

not going to wiggle out of the way or anything while you're driving these screws. Once the screw is driven, then the parts are locked in place and

everything's good to go. There's glue there, so as soon as you have a side

frame done and fastened together with screws, go right ahead and drill holes

here and here and here for carriage bolts and do them up. Do them up tight

with a nut and washer while the glue is still wet so that those parts are

brought together firmly. And while the glue dries, you're going to get a better

glue joint that way. Next step would be to cut your top boards. Here they are

here, and you can join them together in one unit by adding the middle support

fastened, of course, in the middle of the boards. And you can use deck screws there

and some glue. That would be a good idea. Drive the deck screws from the bottom

though. It's always a good idea to hide your fasteners whenever you can. Now at

this stage, you've got the top boards joined together, kind of, in one unit

You want to get a helper or two to hold up the end frames where they need to go

on the underside of the top. And the idea there is that we're going to hold this

end frame up, this end frame up, you're going to put the tabletop on it, and you're

going to fasten the tabletop to the end frames with two screws per joint, all the

way along, two deck screws per joint, three and a half, four inches long. That's

going to do a good job. You're going to want to mark, mark a pencil line so that

your screws aren't all over the place. Screws or nails, when they're driven in a

nice straight line with even spacing, they look much, much better than when

they're just driven by eye. The thing is though, you're not really going to know

if the leg frames are square to the underside of the top. They need to be 90

degrees to the underside of the top, and you really can't tell for sure how close

you are, and you could be very far off. So what you do next is you flip the whole

arrangement over. So you're flipping the tabletop upside down, and of course

don't forget at this stage, the leg frames are fastened too. So flip it upside

down and do whatever you need to do to level the top. So use a level to measure

its levelness lengthwise as it sits on the ground, and crossways as it sits on

the ground, and use shims or chunks of old scrap lumber or little pieces of cardboard

or whatever is necessary to make that top level in its two directions

Once you've done that, you can use your level to make sure that the leg frames are

square to the top. Because if the top is level, sort of truly horizontal

and you make the leg frames plum or truly vertical, then they will

by definition, be 90 degrees to each other. I don't think that's what you're going

to find when you do this measurement. I think the leg frames will always be a

little bit out, and your level will tell you that. But the way you stabilize the

leg frames is by adding these diagonal braces. See, one's here, another one here

And you're going to want to custom cut those, custom cut the length so that when

the diagonal brace is jammed up against this middle support, and the bottom end

is touching the bottom cross piece. You can see that right here, too

That's the bottom cross piece, and that ghosted area there, that's the end

of the diagonal brace. When the diagonal brace is the correct length

and it's fastened here at the top, and it's fastened at the bottom

then the leg frame will be 90 degrees to the top, and it will stay that way

It's a design that ensures that it stays square and solid. And that's how you make

things square as you're putting them together. Far better to use your level to

determine squareness than a carpenter's square, which is hard to read when

projects get this big. Last step, flip the table over, right side up

add your seat boards, and away you go. Time to open the picnic lunch