A photo finish

I think I made this project far more complicated than it needed to be. But despite my mistakes and design changes, I think I actually ended up with something at least presentable in the end. I built this piece from the beginning to show at The Furniture Project, which Eli Cleveland and crew put on every year to promote hand crafted furniture to the public. Hopefully I did the show (and an unsuspecting walnut tree) proud.

Sadly, this marks the end of this project, but have a few concepts already in mind for the next one. In the meantime, I'm thinking a proper shop tour is long overdue, and it might be the perfect intermission to the next big thing.

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Don't get your drawers in a bunch

I have to admit, in the last episode I think I made more mistakes in a few steps than I've ever made in a full project before. Improvising on a piece of furniture isn't always the best approach. So in this installment, I made a real effort to do whatever I could to eliminate mistakes.

Because the drawers for this table go into the sides, rather than the front, there's a lot less structure to build runners and kickers into. Normally you have the back to anchor the guts of the drawer guides. So in this case, I had to fit drawer guides into the front and back aprons. And then manage to get the false drawer fronts in place. 

I didn't expect this part of the project to be particularly challenging. I was in for a bit of a surprise.

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Not your average drawers

This episode is all about gluing up the carcass to allow me to then measure and fit the drawers. While this seemed like a fairly simple phase of the project, I still managed to walk into yet another brainless blunder. In the last episode, I learned first-hand how it can be challenging to "design on the fly". I never drew up any plans or built a model for the project because it seemed fairly straightforward. Well in this episode, I pretty much convinced myself that I need to draw up design plans for EVERY project, no matter how simple. I think even my next door stopper will have a full 3D model and full scale mock-up ;)




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A game of recovery

You might recall that I’m building this entire live-edge hall table completely on the fly. This all started with the live-edge top dictating the exact size and shape of the carcass. While this project seemed simple enough, having no drawings, model, or even sketch started to become a limitation. I started to make some fairly dumb mistakes that I would have easily avoided by looking at a 3D model or even a sketch. But woodworking is a game of recovery and agility, and fortunately I didn’t screw anything up so badly that I had to start over. I retrospect, deciding to introduce drawers into the plan this late in the game probably didn’t set me up for success!


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A simple solution to complex joinery

With the aprons veneered, its time to start thinking about my joinery. The trick to this step is twofold. I have a curved front apron, which would be almost impossible to clamp into my tenon jig, or even a vice to cut tenons by hand. And secondly, the legs meet the aprons at roughly a 5 degree angle, adding to the complexity. But as is often the case when I face this kind of challenge, the solution is a green one.



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The pressing issue of matched aprons

In my last episode, I created the curved front apron out of maple. However, my plan for the carcass of my hall table is for cherry. So in this episode I explain how I made my own veneers and then used three different clamping or pressing techniques to apply the veneers to all four table aprons. I could have made life a lot easier on myself if I had about twice as many clamps as I do, proving once again the axiom that a woodworker can never have too many clamps.

Some of you may have also heard my recent discussion on the Fine Woodworking Shop Talk Live podcast where I mentioned a recent mistake I had made with a vacuum press. While the footage in this video shows the "after" scenario, my first attempt at veneering my side aprons found me struggling with a hole in the vacuum bag. A simple piece of tape fixed the problem, but remind me how important it is to do a dry run of ANY kind of clamping technique before the glue gets involved.


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Stacking the odds

In true Nakashima style, I wanted the live edge top for my hall table to dictate the size and shape of the carcass that supports is. Since the front of the table top follows a gentle curved shape, I want to match the same curve to the front apron of the table.

In my curved front writing desk project from a few years back, I used a bent lamination technique to create the curved drawer fronts. The technique works great if you don't need to cut any big joinery into the components. But to created the crescent front for this hall table, I need to build an apron that can be tenoned into the legs. Unfortunately, the big weakness of bent lamination is that if you shape or cut the piece and sever too many glue joints, you can weaken the bond.

So for this project, I decided to use a stacked lamination technique where I built up the apron structure out of four pieces of stacked maple which I will ultimately veneer with cherry to match the rest of the carcass. I originally thought I was using soft maple, but it turns out I was working with rock maple, so there was a little more elbow grease involved than I had expected. But I'm sure going to have one strong front apron!




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The Tuscan Design Method

In the first two episodes of this build, I worked on getting my live-edge table top shaped. This is actually the reverse process from how I typically work. Usually I start with the carcass and then move on to the top, but in this case the irregular shape of the top needs to actually inform the shape of the base. But in order to be able to lay out my aprons, I must have my legs designed and built first. In this episode, I'll walk you through my organic design process for creating what ultimately became tusk-shaped legs. Then in the next set of episodes, I'll get into the actual layout and construction of the base and joinery - probably my favorite part of any project. And stay tuned, because this project is going to have a fun little twist in the design of the carcass itself.



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Just plane hard work

In this second episode of my live-edge table, I take to the hand planes. This slab is too wide to get through my planer let alone my jointer, so it's time to roll up the sleeves and work up a sweat. I found the slab had a fairly pronounced twist, and I also ran into some trouble finding a good way to clamp it to my bench for planing. So beware to the purists, I do actually have to resort to some key power tools to get the job done. Next time, I'm totally building one of those router jigs that Nick Offerman uses in his shop.


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Slab happy

I met with a local sawyer over the summer, and while I was at his shop, he uncovered his special stash of walnut slabs. He had almost a complete flitch of 8/4 walnut slabs, and I couldn't leave for home without at least one board. I had no idea what I was going to use it for, but it was priced right and I happily made room in my shop to store it until I had a use for it.

Well, I finally decided it was time to turn it into furniture. I had a rough idea in my mind that it would become a hall table, but I decided to use the shape and size of the slab itself to dictate the design, rather than the other way around. So this project is going to be designed as I go, and I already have a few fun ideas of some twists I can incorporate into the piece.

This first episode is all about stock prep. And with a slab almost 22" wide, my power planer and jointer are of no use. So I'll be rolling up my sleeves and doing a lot of hand tool work to start. Which is perfect because it just started getting cold in my shop!


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