Shaker Table

Very Sharp Looking !!!

-- Pat - Worker of Wood, Collector of Tools, Father of one

Nice piece. Good work.

helluvawreck aka Charles
http://woodworkingexpo.wordpress.com

-- If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau

Great job, very clean and nice taper on the legs well done….

-- Ken, "Everyday above ground is a good day!"

Very sleek looking

-- Mother Nature created it, I just assemble it. - It's not ability that we often lack, but the patience to use our ability

It looks very professional for a first piece of furniture

-- - Greetings from Brazil - --

Thanks to all for the comments. I had a lot of fun working on this piece but I also learned a few things, or at least I learned to pay more attention to some details, for example:

Grain direction when gluing up wide panels, the table top is three boards blued up together and I paid attention to place the boards in a way that they look good, at least to my eye, but I forgot to consider grain direction and I didn’t notice that until I tried to hand plane the panel after the glue up, then I noticed that two of the boards were oriented on the same direction but the third one was oriented on the opposite direction, that made it hard to plane at the intersection of the boards with opposite grain direction. You can see some tear out on the final piece.

Plan for all your pieces from the beginning, or at least make sure you always have some extra milled material you can use. At the end of my assembly I had a hard time coming up with enough material for the drawer runners and stops.

Be very careful with glue-ups, this was specially true with my dovetails, I made the mistake of placing clamps right on top of the joint so I didn’t have an opportunity to clean up glue squeeze out before the glue hardened, you can still see some of the glue squeeze out even after I tried to cleanup as much as possible before finishing.

Keep better track of the orientation of each one of your parts at all times, this specially true if you want your piece to follow grain continuity. For example on my table, I wanted to have all my aprons and the drawer front to be on the same grain sequence so I cut them out of the same long board, on the final piece they ended up being on the right place were they were supposed to be, but some of them are inside out. After some of the milling, hand planning and sanding, I lost my marks.

Leave yourself some “wiggle” room after milling your lumber, in my case the back apron is thiner then the rest of the aprons/drawer front because after running it through my jointer/planner it warped and I had to make it thinner than the others.

Simple but remarkable!

-- "someone has to be wounded for others to be saved, someone has to sacrifice for others to feel happiness, someone has to die so others could live"

Amazing first furniture piece a truly grand job.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

You’ve done a great job on your first project. It looks so very well constructed, you have gotten the most from the QSWO. It shows that you have paid attention to the grain orientation when selecting your pieces. Well done!

-- Peter, Woodbridge, Ontario

Great job for a first project, or a tenth project!

I just about to start on one like this for my sister, but it will be a “double wide” sofa table, in cherry.

-- Douglas in Chicago - http://dcwwoodworking.com

Beautiful first furniture project. It is store quality or better. Keep up the good work. You sure have talent!!

-- Jim Jakosh.....Practical Wood Products...........Learn something new every day!!