Thread: Queensland Walnut Mid Century "Mod" Coffee Table

Hi Luke,
Great job,you don't have to like a commission that's up to the client you just have to be happy with the quality of the workmanship and you are and should be a job well done.
I have maybe been lucky with the little amount Queensland Walnut that I have used as like you I found it to be quite workable without any serious problems.
Regards Rod.

Awesome piece of work. I have a bit of QLD walnut, and it planed beautifully, so not sure where it got that reputation, much easier than blackwood for comparison.

Cheers, Jeff

Thanks so much for sharing the build Luke, that top really is something special. Personally I quite like the style and if I was your client I'd be singing your praises.

Thank you so much for clearly explaining the process with pictures. This kind of post is invaluable for beginners like me.

That does look like a beautiful timber.
One suggestion. You could get a short history of the timber and build engraved on a plate under the table. Or engraved into the wood on the under side. This would increase it's value for ever.

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Originally Posted by DaveVman

One suggestion. You could get a short history of the timber and build engraved on a plate under the table. Or engraved into the wood on the under side. This would increase it's value for ever.

I've actually thought about that, and on a more valuable piece of furniture I may actually do it one day.

That is a beautiful piece of work. The table top looks absolutely stunning. I would be happy to have one like it in my house.

It's a lovely piece, that fits with what the client wanted. Beautifully executed. Well done.

Cheers,

ajw

Nicely done, Luke, & I second what Rod said about not having to like the aesthetics of a commissioned piece if it's what the person requesting it has asked for. And no matter how much I disliked the design, I wouldn't let it out of my shop if I weren't satisfied the joinery was as good as I could possibly make it!

I had a similar experience when I was having my go at being a full-time furniture maker, I was asked to make a chair to make 5 chairs into a set of 6. There had originally been 10, but with two offspring to inherit, & both wanting some, it became two sets of 5. They were far from the prettiest chairs I've seen, but I did my level best to make the copy close to the originals (which was helped a lot because the carved details were pretty variable when you looked closely). But I laboured over the joinery as if it were for my own use. I think I got it pretty close, but it's something I would only show to you guys: Cedar dining chairs red.jpg

Qld Walnut has its reputation for being an edge-dulling cow of a wood for a very good reason - it most certainly can be! You and the folks that have found it quite good to work with have been lucky, because mature trees have more silica in their wood than any other species on earth, by a huge margin. However, younger trees, & possibly those grown on particular sites, are far more civilised and not bad to work, so you must have all been lucky to have struck wood from these. I had some that dulled a newish Liogier rasp over a couple of saw handles, & Liogier make their rasps to handle marble!

It can be a beautiful wood, as Luke has just demonstrated, & I saw some absolutely stunning stuff up on the Tablelands a month or two back, so it's well worth giving any you can get your hands on a good go, but be prepared to resort to carbide edges & burning electrons to wrestle some of it into submission.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

...I had some that dulled a newish Liogier rasp over a couple of saw handles, & Liogier make their rasps to handle marble!...

Wow... Yeah, I guess I hit the jackpot with this stuff. Granted, this wasn't traditional casework with mouldings, carvings, and lots of hand cut joints, but it seemed to work well enough. Then again, most of the machines I used had carbide cutters, and I probably oversharpen a bit anyway these days, so who knows... maybe I'm taking my evidence as quality data instead of merely anecdotal. The next time I use this stuff I expect it will be on a full sized dresser, so we shall see...

I, for one, think you nailed it on the chair, by the way!

Cheers,
Luke

It seems to be simple pot luck, Luke, the stuff is either quite ok, or absolutely horrendous, from what you read about it. I think you just got lucky with your trove, so give thanks to your guardian wood-nymph, or whoever it was looked out for you.

'Arf yer luck - don't you remember I looked a bit doubtful when you told me you'd got your hands on some big billets? Anyways, it's impossible to obtain regular supplies these days, so enjoy what you managed to score and make something special with what's left.

OTH, that chunk of Maple I got from you is the goods! More figured than it looked in the rough, so I'm a very happy chappie. I've gotten as far as re-sawing half of it into planks, but they're 'resting' atm, while I decide if I'm going to use them for the bookcase they were destined for. They're too good for something where much of the wood won't even be visible, I need a few planks of plainer stuff......

Cheers,

Ian, what's your opinion on the joints? The plates through which they're wedged are about 5/8" thick. Around 16mm. I used wedged slots and thick pieces of US Ash so that they would flare quickly and stick. All felt solid with wet glue and, of course, more solid with dry.

You think they have much longevity or do you think I'll be hearing from them soon? My foremost worry is that the plates are too thin and there wasn't enough contact/glue surface.

I'd also be willing to hear any other opinions. I felt good about this technique, but I didn't really have any historical context on which to base it.

Cheers,
Luke

Luke, I'd have to refer you to my civil engineer BIL (or the other Ian ) for a 'proper' structural analysis, but my intuitive reaction is that 16mm is a bit on the lean side. What I'd worry about with the short tenons & the sloped legs is that there's a high likelihood of the tenon twisting out of the shallow hole if much weight is applied to it. I would've opted for a depth of at least 25mm and preferably 30 for the leg blocks. That's about the depth of a chair seat, where similar joints manage to support pretty severe (& non-static) loads, so that would be a safer bet for the long haul, methinks. The thicker blocks wouldn't be visible from a normal sitting position would they? So they shouldn't detract from the 'floating' look you were after.

Much depends on how the table is treated, of course. So as long as they have no Cossack friends given to spontaneous table-dancing it should be ok; and I might warn them not to use it for changing the lightbulbs....

Cheers,

That is a very nice looking table Luke . And the colour and finish of the QLD Walnut is certainly the nicest Ive ever seen of it .
I'm used to seeing all the stuff that was made from Qld Walnut sixty or more years ago and Ive never liked it based on that .All dark and glossed up with thick worn out varnish.

Its great that you tenoned and wedged the legs through a block, and screwed them on. Nicer than metal fittings and always a better quality look
I think if it was me one small change I would have done with the leg joints is what Ive seen on old stuff. That is that the blocks could be made as wide as possible across the under side of the table . And with a taper at each end so they can go out wide and not be visible when looking from above out at a distance. One cross piece down one end holding two wedged legs like you did.
And as wide as possible holding the one wedged leg up the other end. Balance out the screws through the middle and have two at the end of the tapers at each end and this would be stronger and help keep the top straight if it wants to shift . You could even get a little stylish and make these two plates curved to follow the top a little.

This sort of thing is done on old stuff and its also taken further where the leg goes through the plates and through the top as well and is wedged down through the end of the leg visible on the top . Thats a strong country style way of doing it .

The good thing is if your top moved and it needed help you can still do that to it if needed.

Rob

Ian and Rob,

Thanks for the thoughts. You guys are among the two or three foremost opinions I trust on joinery on here, so that's greatly appreciated.

Rob, I thought about something like you mention, with wider pieces attaching the legs to the bottom. I even thought about having the front and back legs joined in some kind of "T" shaped thing that would just screw up into to table top as one piece. I ultimately went with the three autonomous legs because I felt it would be easier to move them around and test different configurations. This turned out to be a boon, because what I ultimately settled on was far removed from what I started with. If I were to remake the table, knowing what I know now, I think I could both save time and improve the solidity of the table by doing a more elaborate undercarriage.

As far as thickness, it was ultimately a compromise. I'm looking at it from across the room now, and I can just see the closest of the wooden plates poking down under the table. I think that because of my steep splay angle and the bevel/chamfer around the edges, it makes them visible at a distance. If you're sitting at it like the coffee table it is designed to be, you'll never see them, and they could probably be thicker. 30mm might be a push, but 18-25 may work.

I can lean my upper body on it like I'm doing a push up, and I'm around 200lbs. I doubt it would break it to sit books down hard, take off backpacks, etc. I think it would take something like a fall onto the table or possibly standing on it, but I'm not ruling out (or testing, for that matter...) the possibility that it could support a person's weight. It's remarkably sturdy in its current state. I will definitely advise against lightbulb changes though.

As far as longevity: As they say, time will tell... I don't expect to reach a point as a cabinetmaker where I can't provide a lifetime repair and replacement warantee with each piece, so if this one comes back at some point down the line it'll be a pleasure to see it again.

Rob, I am also pretty excited about the colors on the top. That's one light coat of Watco Dark Walnut stained Danish Oil, followed by a coat of their Natural Danish Oil. Good products if you can get them in AU. It's hard to believe that that was the cladding for a rural woolshed! Just goes to show you the kind of lumber they had access to back in the day. I bought about 0.4 cubic meters of the stuff with heavy oxidation, so opening it up to find beautiful, interwoven grain and figuring was a treat, and kind of reaffirming of the purchase.

Cheers,
Luke