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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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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