Red Oak End Table

I had been using one of those particle board tri-pods for a nightstand for some time when I realized I could probably make something a little better. The particle board table was very unstable, and I often had to choose whether to let the lamp, speaker of cell phone hit the ground as everything falls to the ground after even the slightest bump. This inspired me to make something very heavy and sturdy.

The whole piece is solid red oak, and the legs are 2’’ blanks with the top and bottom shelves 6/4’’. I rabbeted the empty drawer panels into the legs and dadoed the drawer bottom. I cut a section of the legs out for the bottom shelf with enough of the shelf to extend past the legs. All the surfaces were hand planed with use of a card scraper for part of the top that had some cross-directional grain that gave me some chopping problems.

The finish is 5 layers of Bullseye clear, de-waxed shellack as a seal for glazing with Minwax mahogany gel stain. I have a top coat of Enduro-Var and a coat of carnauba wax for a little extra protection. Thanks for looking.