| Blog series by Blake | updated 371 days ago | 7 parts | 4396 reads | 74 comments total |
Part 1: Sketchup Design
I have been thinking about making another table lately. I had so much fun building the Sewing Table that I wanted to make something for our house. And my wife has wanted a place to put her collection of jewelry. So we came up with this idea (actually it was mostly her idea) and I started doing some designing today. This is what I came up with so far. The idea is to make a hall table with a lifting “lid” and a hidden jewelry case underneath with lots of room for necklaces, brace...
Part 2: Nice Legs!
I finally started working on my table the other night. Here is what I did so far… (By the way, here is the sketchup design just to remind you…) I’m actually not sure if I will make the jewelry compartment or not. I will have to see how it goes. I do about half my design on paper/computer and the other half on the fly. Here’s the pile after I cross cut some of my pieces to rough length (still designing on the fly a little until I get a sense of my proportions). Birdseye Map...
Part 3: Top and Tenons
I had a couple of hours to work on my table the other night. Most of the time was spent sanding my Mahogany with my homemade thickness sander. I love the figure in this mahogany but it is hell to work with. If you plane or even scrape it the surface becomes as furry as a cat because the grain is so wavy. It will still require many hours of sanding by Random Orbit Sander and Palm Sander before it is glassy smooth. Then I biscuited the top together: And glued it up. The...
Part 4: Tapered Legs and Joinery
On my Sewing Table I tapered the legs on only two sides. I made the cuts freehand on the bandsaw and then cleaned them up on the Jointer and sander. For this table I really wanted to taper the legs on all four sides for a more refined look. So I decided the easiest way to make the tapers would be to build a simple “5 minute jig.” So this is the quick, cheap, disposable, dedicated taper jig I made: Here it is set up on the table saw… The rip fence is being used ...
Part 5: I Pulled an All-Nighter
I was up until 5:00 AM. Yea, 5 AM. I was gonna work on my table all day today but I got called into work because my boss is sick. I really wanted to work on my table so I thought I would do a little woodworking last night before bed. Well, a little turned into a lot. The hours flew by and when I looked at the clock and it said 5. I was pretty sure that 5 PM had passed long ago… yup, it had. Anyway, here are a few photos I took but I sort of forgot to pick up the camera most of the ti...
Part 6: Building the Arches... Design Challenges
Like I mentioned before, I am building a matching coffee table along with my “hall table.” I have been making an effort to document the time I spend on larger projects for my own reference. But since I am building two projects together the concept of time is getting a little blurry. I spent a few hours the other day just getting the coffee table caught up in the process. All the joinery is the same as before. I decided to try taping my joints to make it easier to peel off the g...
Part 7: Laminating the Arches
Finally I have the first set of arches glued and clamped in the bending form. I have only made the arches for the hall table so far. Once I finish it I will go back and do the coffee table. Since I only made one form for each shape I did it in two stages. I glued the first two arches yesterday and just got the identical (“opposing”) set in the forms tonight. I used my Thin-Strip Jig to cut the bending strips. That was very repetitive work for a while. I cut all the strips fo...
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