John’s Holiday Project
Here’s a small round accent table that I made for my grandparents. It’s out of cherry and features a turned top & center post and carved legs. This is actually my first piece of furniture and only the second thing I’ve ever turned - the first thing was practice! I used an old 1950’s Shopsmith for the turning, A Delta tablesaw for dimensioning, Some rasps for the legs, chisels for the mortises and a handful of clamps for some of the glue-ups. There are several things I would do differently the second time around. But for a first go at it I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out. Thanks for the great site!
Dining Table and Chairs - Project of the Week
This week’s project comes from John. Let’s see what he has to show us:
“I visit your website almost daily with the intention of furthering my woodworking knowledge and being entertained. You have yet to disappoint me. Attached are a few pictures for your Project of the Week. I just completed this dining table and chair set which replaced a far more traditional piece of furniture that no longer meets our current decor taste.”
“Thirty-five years ago my wife fell in love with a Thomasville dining set. But times have changed and so has my wife’s taste in furniture. So out with the old, in with the new. The new table measures 68 x 44 which is the size of it’s predecessor. The table base and breadboard are walnut, although since I eventually ebonized it, the wood could be almost anything. The top is 1” MDF veneered with quarter sawn raw wood cherry. The inspiration for the finish came from some high-end audio speaker cabinets. The first step was to add the black stripes. This was done by applying black dye to some grain patterns and immediately wiping away as much as I could. I then sanded it to leave a faint amount on the top. I mixed General Finishes Cranberry and Golden Oak stains in a 5:1 ratio for the basic color. This was followed by spraying 4 coats of General Finishes Top Performance glossy polyurethane followed by two coats of satin.”
“Since I had never made a chair before, I needed some help. I purchased Jeff Miller’s Chair making & Design and essentially copied one of his basic designs. The wood I chose was poplar since it would be ebonized and is cheap. The joints are mortise and loose tenons except for the side rails which are angled tenons. The angled tenons were the most challenging part of the construction. The finish is black dye followed by a black stain because I like a very black black and dye goes places that stain doesn’t. This was followed by three coats of gloss poly and two coats of satin. I have to credit my wife for making the seat cushions. This was her first upholstery attempt, and I think she did great.”
“The dining set now sits proudly in our dining room along with some of the other projects I have done. The corner display and floor standing clock have been around for about a year and nicely complement the table and chairs. Thanks, Marc. And keep on whisperin”.
Cantilevered End Table - Bonus Project of the Week
This week’s project is submitted by Bryan. Let’s check out what he has to say:
“This is my first piece of ‘fine’ furniture, which has helped to develop my passion for woodworking. I built this piece as part of a Furniture Design class in the architecture school during my undergrad, even though I was a finance major. The piece is made of red oak and walnut and the table tops stand at 12” and 24” respectively. I started out with all rough lumber, 5/4 red oak, and 8/4 walnut. I milled the oak with the thickness planer down to 1” thick by 3” wide for the larger side, and 1” thick by 2” wide for the smaller side. Once I had these measurements, I used the table saw to cut all of my angles for both the longer pieces and smaller ‘head’ and ‘foot’ pieces. At this point I had cut all of my oak pieces and it was time for glue up. I did this in sections. First I glued up the 3” section by combining two long pieces with the appropriate ‘head’ and ‘foot’ pieces. Once all of these smaller sections were done, I glued them together until I eventually had one long row of alternating blank sections and long sections 17” wide. I then built a jig to hold this entire piece at the appropriate angle in order to route out the section for the walnut/glass, which took a nice long 2” router bit a while to hog out. Once this step was done, I was able to put the last two outside boards to make the ends look more finished. I cut the walnut to size, drilled the holes for the dowels, cut the angle on the walnut and glued it into place, along with the red oak dowels. I used a ½ piece of wood as a spacer for the glass. I did the a similar process for the 2” smaller side, except I didn’t glue the alternating boards on the bottom section until after I meshed the two together. Once together, I glued in the missing pieces, securing the two sections forever. The last step was inserting the 17”Wx23”Lx1/2”D glass into the top section and the 17”Wx11”Lx1/2”D glass into the bottom section.”
“It is finished with about 3 coats of Danish Oil sanded down to about 400 grit and has a poly spray topcoat. Overall this is a very strong piece, and has no problem holding the glass, even with me leaning on it, as the table will tip over before the joint would ever fail. There are definitely things I would consider doing different though, but that’s the challenge for my next piece. Enjoy my cantilevered end table and thanks for all of the inspiration. As always, I look forward to the next video!
Walnut Side Table - Project of the Week
This week’s project comes from Lee in Austin who writes:
Thought you might like to take a look at the side-table I built out of Walnut. Not nearly as cool as the curves and floating top you made, but OK for a first table with mortise and tenon joints. Keep up the great show. We really enjoy both the content and presentation style.
I started out with rough Walnut that I picked up over the course of about six months. One board was 8/4 and three boards were 5/4. The boards were about 6 ft long and 5 in. wide. I dimensioned it with my Jet 6” deluxe jointer, DeWalt 13” planer and my SawStop. Legs ended up 2” x 2 1/8” x 23 1/4”, rails 4” x 14” (including tenon length) x 9/16” and the top 18 1/2” x 18 1/2” x 3/4”. After cutting the pieces to size, I used my Powermatic hollow-chisel mortiser to cut mortises into the legs. The legs were not exact squares so I paired them up (e.g. Mortise for back left leg connects with mortise for back right leg, mortise for back right leg connects with front right leg, …) so the relative distance from the outside surface of the leg to the rail was the same on each leg. I decided to use the 3/8” hollow chisel.
I planned for a 1/2” shoulder on the top and bottom of the tenons which started the mortise 1/2” from the top. After cutting the mortises, I laid out the legs with the rails to decide which board looked best with between certain legs and to mark my cuts. I ended up cutting a 1” tenon on each end of the rails. I made a cut-off sled so I could be as accurate as possible when cutting the tenons. I cut the shoulder on all four sides up against a stop block clamped to the sled. I just nibbled away the material checking the fit until I liked it.
Since I had the mortise pretty well centered on the legs I cut the end of each tenon to 45 degrees so the two tenons coming into a leg would not hit each other. I glued up two legs with a rail and then the other two legs with another rail. After these were clamped I added the other two rails and used enough clamps to ensure adequate pressure to close up each joint. Checking that all four legs were level and all joints were nice and tight, I left it to cook. The top is a glue up of 4 pieces of walnut that looked “right” together. I didn’t use biscuits or dowels in this glue up since the top is pretty small. I used yellow glue for all gluing processes.
The 4 pieces of walnut were jointed and planed on the top and bottom surface before glue up. The inside edges didn’t touch the jointer or planer. I ripped the boards on my SawStop and the pieces matched up exactly. I scraped the partially cooked glue to minimize the work after the clamps came off. I knocked off the hard edges from the legs and rails with a little oval sanding pad. One pad has something like 60 micron/30 micron and the other has 15 micron/5 micron. I worked down from 60 to 5 and it is really nice to the touch. I sanded and scraped after the base and top came out of the clamps. I used a block plane to put a small chamfer on the bottom of each leg (all four sides).
After this I was ready to start finishing. I love Tung Oil. Just seems to bring out the wood. I gave both the base and the top 2 coats of tung oil (all sides) with a bit of touch up hand sanding. Just enough to remove the nibs. I attached the top to the base with figure eight fasteners. After it was together, I applied some good furniture paste wax and buffed it out. This is what you see in the pictures of the final table. Go have fun making saw dust.
End Table - Project of the Week
This week’s project comes from Martin. He writes:
Here is my latest project, an End Table I designed from scratch. The legs and frame are Lyptus with Bloodwood “shoes” and the top is Canary Wood. Note the sliding dovetail joints which also act as a decorative element. The legs took quite a bit of work to perfect. I use a router table and pattern making bit to finish the compound curves. Lyptus is a bit splintery so cutting down grain is mandatory (I learned the hard way).
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