Thread: Ottoman Trays

I have a client that has some ottomans she doesn't use, so wanted to get some large trays made to fit over them, so she could then use them as coffee tables. She had been talking about laminated pine but the costs started to add up. She just moved into a newly constructed house and when I was dropping off some other work for her I noticed heaps of left over 180x15mm oak floor boards lying on the ground. To save her some money I suggested I make the trays from the floorboards. She advised they were laminated floorboards in lieu of solid and she didn't want to see the ply undersides. So I suggested I make the tray sides each from 3 boards so the oak was always visible, except on the bottom where they would be hidden. She said that would be perfect but to ensure the sides were still no more than 15mm thick.

So I started by glueing up the floorboards for the tray bottoms, and while they were drying, thicknessed down a some of the other floorboards ready to make the sides from. I worked out I could get the inside/outide/triangular piece out of 1 width of floorboard, so decided to thickness them down as a full width floorboard to be cut up afterwards. Not sure what laminated floorboards are made from, but definitely some sort of hardwood, with 7 layers under the 3mm oak veneer. I should have cut them first in the bandsaw, but instead did the whole lot on my little old GMC thicknessor It was a slow process as I could only do 12 1mm cut passes before the little beast overheated, due to the orientation of the grain, and it then shut down for 3 hours before being able to run again. The first time it happened I thought I had killed it .

Setting up my table saw at 45 degrees I cut the triangle then the two pieces of side from each floor board. I then glue and nailed the two side pieces together lining up the 45 degree tips before glueing and nailing on the little triangle piece on top. After cleaning up the top to get a good straight clean face I then cut the side pieces to height and made a 15mmx7.5mm rectangular recess at the bottom to fit over the tray bases. Luckily the nails were only little pins and the saw TCT as I did hit a couple

tray laminated side.jpg


I then took the glued up tray bases and cut them to size on the table saw, less 15mm to allow for the sides to be attached, and also cut the tray sides with 45 degree ends with the drop saw. The sides were then glued and nailed onto the bases. The oak was very splintery so I did need some filler but it sanded up pretty well, and the client is happy , which is the main thing . She will paint/varnish them herself. The trays are 840sq, 780sq and 670 square all with 65mm sides. The photo shows them stacked on top and inside of each other.

trays.jpg