Save Your Scraps...

I built this table out of scraps. I have a friend who needed a few slats for a camp bed, so I picked up a bit of rough red oak and made her a few boards. That wasn't so challenging, but then I had a few scraps left over. The legs were from a piece of plank that failed to be a fence for the router table.

The top was one of my first projects using four way clamps. They're fairly nifty. Rockler carries them, and they do a great job of keeping your top lined up during glue up. On this top, I only had to scrape off a little glue and do minimal flattening. It's held on using figure 8 shaped pieces of steel and screws. They're a standard attatchment thingy that you can buy from Rockler or Woodcraft. They're easy to use and more than secure for this application.

The shelf on the bottom was a fair bit of work. For the most part, it's glued together. The outside is glued and pinned. Where the pins are obvious, I've used walnut and carved the pins so that they leave a diamond shaped head profile. The ends of the shelf stretchers are through mortised and wedged into the leg frames. The wedges are also walnut, to match the pins.

I'm happy with the curved leg and corbel detail, which is becoming something of a signature on the furniture I make. One of my wife's friends says that you can tell I made the furniture because it's got those curves.

The finish that was applied to the table is boiled linseed oil and wax on the frame, and boiled linseed oil and then polyurethane (rag applied) on the top. I'm not sure how many coats. Maybe 6 or 7 of each of the liquids, but only 2 coats of paste wax.

This is one of the few pieces of furniture I've done without any pre drawn plans. All the measurements just somehow stuck in my head...