Thread: inlayed octagon coffee table

I likes it, bit trendy really!

Ni GB,

Definitely enjoy it! It's a very beautiful, eye pleasing shape and design.

Cheers
Wendy

PS - Welcome to the club

Looks great, unfortunately am unable to offer any assistance to you

Your table looks great.
It is a bit surprising how well the curves and the angles go well together.

Bubinga has some great figure and polishes up a treat.

You are probably right about future problems with wood movement. I don't have much in the way of solutions. Like you said, enjoy until it decides to move. If it moves.
If you end up with gaps, hopefully along the glue lines, you could rout them all out and put in black and white inlay stips.

It may never happen so just enjoy a good job.

Very striking design gristleburger . I like it - I just hope your worst fears are not realized . Tell us about the legs and how you matched the curve of the edging to the body of the leg

tanks for the tumbs up, peter ....

the legs are a lightweight combination of the 3/4 inch mahogany arcs and the luan, neither of which provide much strength by themselves. all i really had in mind was the eye appeal - i liked the non-centric combo of the center cutout and the edge profile. (and the contrasting color). the mahogany is evenly about 2 inches wide, and is really designed to carry the vertical load of the table. i tried to use the luan in tension and to position and just stabilize the legs. the mahogany was shaped and smoothed using the belt sander, then the 7/16 x 1/2" slots were routed into the inside edges using my table router and rabbetting bit. the luan was simply cut afterwards with a jigsaw, then glued into the slot and secured with a few brads.

the luan is in 3 pieces - a half circle, and two quarter circles.

securing the legs to the top was a bit less pretty. it was done with 4 small blocks anchored to the top underside, then the tops of the legs were screwed into the blocks. not very strong, or attractive--but no one sees it. the table is reasonably stable and strong enough for most purposes; but i wouldn't risk a quickie with the wife on it. save that fun for the hood of the car!

good work mate,
I too have the inlay/table bug. How did you do the curves? Router with home made templates? I am looking at spirocraft products to add curved designs. I only inlay using solid timber, not veneer.

Keep up the good work.
conwood

Originally Posted by conwood

good work mate,
I too have the inlay/table bug. How did you do the curves? Router with home made templates? I am looking at spirocraft products to add curved designs. I only inlay using solid timber, not veneer.

Keep up the good work.
conwood

thanks conwood---

i like the inlay table stuff too, mainly because if you do a decent job, your work is in a high visibility location. of course, when you f*** up a section and are tempted to leave your mess with just a passing grade, it will haunt you forever, staring up at you...

on your Q about the curves: if your talking about the mahogany, they were cut from 4/4 stock with a jigsaw tracing a path scribed by a nail, string and pencil. no templates, just on-the- fly wood sketching. they were bolted together as 4, then belt sanded en masse. they could just as easily have been done with a router with an arc cutting radius jig.

as for the inlays...in this case they are all straight edge geometric patterns. ive never heard of the spirocraft things which you mentioned, but i may check that out on the web some night. i havent tackled curved inlays yet, but i get bored quickly and love to try new tricks when i see others do them well. maybe those are next.

keep clear of your blade, and lumber on!
gb

Nice table GB, What angle are the cuts for each segment, I'd like to make an Octagonal Poker Table at some stage but I'm a bit afraid of angles.

HH.