Curving table base

My grandmother has been hinting at wanting a new base for her engraved brass table. The table top is originally from Pakistan and was supported on a small base that had seen about 40 years of use. After a long life of service it wobbled and folded if the table was bumped. The old base was very curvy and fluid, something i hoped to duplicate with my design.

After woodworking for a few years I decided that this was something I could do.

I planned on using alder or another less expensive domestic hardwood, but when i got to the lumber yard they had a ton of cheap Philippine mahogany. I scratched my head and figured, “hey, its mahogany right, this is gonna be classy!” Instead of googling it right then I bought the wood and did some research when I got home. I found that I had in fact a bought a bunch of Luann… but that was okay, I had an idea.

I made a template for the legs out if some scrap Home Depot pine, roughed out the shape on the band saw and then cleaned them up on a bench mounted belt sander. I then used a 1 inch radius round over bit to curve the outside edge of the legs.

The cross pieces were a bit simpler, i used a shop made bending bow to draw a curve and fared it out with some 60 grit adhered to a thin piece of plywood. I then just traced the same curve onto the other piece and repeated the process.

The legs were attached with 3/8” dowels, which was probably a mistake. My last project was all mortise and tenon, and i figured some big dowels were probably just as strong. looking back I think I should have gone mortise and tennon, there is not a lot of joint here for a table, it works but I wonder for how long.

I made another trip to my local Woodcraft and bought some timber-mate wood filler and a can of General Finishes mahogany stain.

I filled the grain with thinned timber mate according to instructions and it worked great. It took the stain flawlessly and was easy to work with. I sealed it with amber shellac to warm up the tone of the stain and then sprayed it with semi-gloss lacquer. I really like the way the whole thing came out, however, red carpet does favors for no one.