Logan’s Spalted Maple Table

This project was a gift for a friend who as a contractor, has come to the rescue of our house a number of times. I wanted something different for his family as a thank you. He recently redid his basement and put in a nice cork floor, so the spalted maple is a nice complement.

The design is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I wanted it to be simple, yet have the look of through tenon joints. The bottom shelf is overlapped with the legs, which are cut out to allow the shelf corners to be seen. For the top I cut off a 2″ edge and joined those underneath to become an apron where the grain was somewhat book ended. Because of the joint technique I used, I had to do a walnut inlay along the joint edge. The top legs are overlapped in 2 depths to help hold it together. Because of the manner in which I put this together, I couldn’t dry fit some of the pieces, which created some interesting issues.

This is completely glued up with no screws or nails holding any of the pieces together. I had originally planned on routing all the edges to soften the corners, but I decided that I liked the sort-of industrial look, so I didn’t do that. I coated the piece with a nice amount of Tung oil and let it sit and cure for about a week. Then I used a water based poly, sanding with 320 grade in between applications (4).