Thorsen Side Table

My table is fairly close in design to the plans. The overall size matches the plans.

I chose walnut and cherry – the top, shelf, inlay and drawer handle are walnut; the aprons, stretchers, legs and breadboards are cherry; and the drawer is aspen and plywood, and the drawer runners are maple. The breadboards were cut from a single board and are bookmatched.

I increased the size of the shelf to fill the space from front to back. This is both practical, we always need places to pile stuff, and a nod to the original Greene and Greene Thorsen House Side table which had a full size shelf. The shelf is floating with tenons riding in dadoes cut into the stretchers.

I added a drawer for storage space and to accommodate this the cutouts were changed to inlays. The drawer handle is made from three layers of walnut. Layer one is the inlay, layer two and three are 3/8” thick and were stack cut on the scroll saw to match the inlay. The middle layer was then trimmed to an elliptical shape to leave finger space. The drawer features hand-cut dovetails on all corners. The drawer sides have dadoes which ride on the drawer runners. A spacer attached to the back apron (scrap walnut and mahogany) keeps the drawer from being pushed too far into the table.

Instead of the quirks which were called for in the plans, I added a chamfer to all of the exposed edges. I had planned to add plugs, but those were abandoned due to time constraints.

The joints between the aprons, stretchers and legs are mortise and tenon as called for on the plans. The mortises were cut on the router table, the tenon shoulders were cut on the table saw, and finished on the router table.

All of the walnut parts were stained with General Finishes gel stain (Spiced Walnut). Finally the entire table received two coats of amber shellac.

For details on the construction see my blog. I’ll be adding more to that. There is also some information at my other (non-LumberJocks) blog.

-- Chelle http://artsgranddaughter.blogspot.com