Thread: Art Deco style round table pedestal

The two base boards needed to have lap joints cut in them, I did so manually with a tenon saw and chisels, then made the bottoms parallel using the hand router. The general form is then shown in the piccies, but of course it will look a bit different after the legs are turned and the decorations added.

Well, it was time to think about turning the legs. First I had to cut the tenons on the foot, while the timber was still square. Which meant I had to cut the mortices in the base for the legs, which I did with the help of my drill press and some chisels. I was going to put a large beads on the foot of the legs, and have a kind of Ionian column, but I had decided to keep it a simpler Art Deco geometric form, so I decided on a purely cylindrical form. I put a protective coat of Danish Oil on each leg as soon as I turned them. The top supports for the pedestal are held into the top of the legs in bridle joints, I cut the incisions on the bandsaw then cleaned up with chisels. I decided on the decorative features for the base and put these in using a router, a hand router and chisels. These were then sanded and finished with the DO. I attached five feet on the base to support the whole thing on the patio bricks.

This looks so good I can see a request for a matching top in your future .

For the top supports I needed some more jarrah, fortunately my old friend John D supplied me with a nice old piece of 4 x 2 which was long enough. That piece also needed some dimensioning before ripping, so out came the Stanley No 7 plane.
The two supports are held by bridle joints into the top of the legs, and have a lap joint where they cross. The picture below shows removing the waste from one of the lap joints, the cuts having all been made with a tenon saw. The other pictures show the arrangement of the joinery at the top.
I must say I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Danish Oil comes up on jarrah, John D told me that he found out this many years ago from the old timers, who knew quite a lot apparently. This was the first time I'd used DO on jarrah, I don't work with jarrah that much.

I like the lapped joinery you chose for the legs. Simple and secure.

The top beams needed a bit of dollying up too, so they also got some art deco type decorations on them. The inside of the jarrah was a lighter, pink colour than normal, John D explains this is because it is what is known as "coastal jarrah", grows in areas of higher rainfall so grows a bit faster than "inland" jarrah, resulting in the pink tone. Then the holes for attaching the top were made in these beams. I didn't mention that the round table is a stone mosaic, and quite heavy, at least 50 kg, so I want to attach it firmly. Always safer to over-engineer, I say, to avoid any problems down the road. So ready for glue-up, I glued the base together first, then glued the legs and top beams following.

Modern glues, like the araldite I used for this work, are marvelous and strong with a long open time (I used the 2-hour epoxy), but with a heavy piece of furniture like this I still like to have some comfort of mind from mechanical joinery!
So I pinned the joins, each tenon on the foot of the legs has two 1/2" dowels (one from each side), and the bridle joints at the top of the legs have one each. Since they are visible, I decided to make my own from jarrah off-cuts, using the lathe then pushing through a dowel plate that I recently acquired. I also ended up putting two dowels through the top lap joint between the two top beams, which stabilised things a lot as well.

Some sanding level of the dowels and re-oiling the necessary spots, and it was done. I attached the table top and voila - no more spilt coffee!

Thanks for reading!

That gets a quiet "woo hoo" from me .