I keep telling myself I will get around to doing everything, I just need a bit more time, so the last several days I was able cross another item of my list of things to makes ... but this one was special, and experiment of sorts.
I have become more interested in furniture that has a "bit of life to it" as one of my friends described, by that he meant using different species of wood, and colors to make the furniture more interesting. As he described, he was tired of seeing "mono color monoliths" and I had to agree with him, so time for me to step and try some new ideas.
I decided to start off by re-making our entryway table. The old one was fine but a new version would adapt much better to our lifestyle. I got hold of some nice Big Leaf Maple that was under 10% moisture content and I already had some Walnut that also measured under 10% so time to put these together.
Here is the finished table, below is the details
I wanted a tapered look to the table legs, so the only taper could be at the very bottom of the leg. I like having a tape in the legs, it just looks a bit more elegant. I love tapering the 2 inside edges because it's easy, and it looks great but you still have 2 flat surfaces to work with and most people don't really notice the the angles are only on the inside pieces of the legs.
As noted earlier, I wanted this piece to have very hard, defined edges. In boat building we call this "hard chined" ... no reason this same naming cannot be used in furniture making. I am liking the look of more defined edges, especially after spending many years making heavily rounded over edges with a router. I just like the hard edge look now, I think it shows the shadows better which makes for a more 3D looking piece of furniture.
Below was what I came up with for the backer board, rather than rounding over that top edge, I used a forstner bit the same radius as the drawer pulls to make a 1/4 cut-away, this way I can eas the corner without making a round over. I love the look of this, I will do more of these.
I had a hard time finding just the right door pull, I wanted Maple, and a certain size which I finally found, and ended up buying a few more, which I will use in future builds. I could probably have gone for a square knob, but I couldn't find any I liked, but easy to change if I find one.
And because this is an entry way table, I know people will be looking at it as the enter and leave the house, which is why I wanted the Walnut accents on the sides as well, just adds a wee bit more detail to the table.
I had a ton of fun making this table, I might even make another similar in the future, I have even more ideas I want to try out ..
Copyright Colin Knecht
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