Writing this in spring of 2023. During the spring of 2017 Kaylin and I were looking for houses. I was realizing we were way short of furniture for the house, and channeled some boredom into making some bedside end tables.
Was still in the Mozart St apartment in Chicago, so no workshop yet, but managed to find a shared “maker space” called Pumping Station One. For a reasonable monthly fee, I could access a pretty nice set of woodworking tools. In particular, I remember they had a saw stop and a hollow-chisel mortiser - nice. Kind of annoying to drive there, hauling tools and wood along the way, but good in a pinch.
These tables look nice in pictures, and are still around, but frankly are full of mistakes. I’m not entirely embarrassed by the mistakes, because it was my first time attempting a bunch of new things (mortise and tenon, hand cut dovetails, curved legs on the bandsaw) but I remember them whenever I look at the tables. May try to fix up a few of them at some point.
Notes:
- Frames are made of cherry, tops are made of an exotic wood called leopardwood.
- The two tables are slightly different in size and in the style of top, but still work nice as a pair.
- Leg curves were hand cut on the bandsaw, and it’s quite obvious as there’s some deviation from leg to leg. Wasn’t aware of the techniques for repeated curved cuts via pattern routing at the time.
- Legs glued up pieces of cherry. I was dumb and thought I needed to reinforce the glue up with biscuits. Then I cut through one of those biscuits with the bandsaw and its visible in the final piece. Guess I had low standards.
- The tops have pieces glued up with perpendicular grain, with no attempt to made to allow for wood movement. Naturally after about 6 years, some of the joints are failing. May try to remake them in the future.
- The draws feature rather poor handcut dovetails. Big gaps, inconsistent tails, overly bulky stock, and a draw action that isn’t smooth. Yuck.
- Finished with shellac followed by a wipe on polyurethane (I believe it was water based). Looks and feels pretty good actually.
Gallery
