Thread: Jacaranda Stand Table

Hello.

Well this is new ground to be treading for me.

You're all very lovely and understanding toward the newbies, but I am nonetheless compelled to add the disclaimer that this is my first try at anything like this. It's imperfect in numerous ways, but I still think it turned out pretty good, and I'm looking forward to improving with practice.

I found a bloke a bit West of here selling off some cheap home-milled jacaranda and thought "well, why not?".

After a hilarious adventure involving getting three massive slabs 'mostly' into the boot of my Camry, I got it home and took it to task with a hand plane.

First lesson learned the hard way: You can never be 'too patient' with planing.

I sized up what I considered to be an interesting bit of the slab for a small table and cut it out with a ripping saw.

Now the folks over in the 'timber' forums were very helpful and insightful, and it came up a few times that the grain was a bit bland and subtle, so I thought, 'this thing is gonna need something interesting to look at', so I picked up a hunk of the jacaranda that had been discarded and went at it with a chisel and made this little guy here:

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0123.jpg

Now I didn't take many pictures in the way of 'WIP'. You've seen slabs being planed and sanded a thousand times over, and this was by far the most time consuming bit.

After some helpful advice, particularly from IanW (thanks Ian), regarding how much this stuff moves with the weather, I came up with a very simple frame design that could accommodate accordingly:

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0122.jpg

Not pictured in the above were two 19mm bores for locating dowel of the same size. One of them 'fixed', one of them 'floating', with the weight of the top on the struts (the frame is made from an old bit of housing strut, haha), and the small rails at the top serving just to 'balance' it. This way, it can do all the moving it wants without causing any worry.

I was going to round-out all of the frame. But doing that cross-bar with the spokeshave kind of sapped my enthusiasm for that adventure. I think it looks ok, anyhow.

Notwithstanding the considerations made for movement, I took Artme's advice (and also considered that it would be a zero-maintenance piece where it ended up), and gave it a few generous coats of orange oil, followed by about twenty billion coats of urethane. This was just as much to stabilise as to protect the surface.

What came out of that was surprising and delightful:

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...GP01271121.jpg

Boring, ordinary old jacaranda eh? I am especially fond of that almost-quilted figure there at the fork.

Anyhow, my little froggie was a bit superfluous, having now seen that figure, but I thought "bugger it, he took an afternoon, he can go on there anyhow". Doweled him in there (in case he ever needed to be popped off for moving house etc):

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0130.jpg

Popped the top on and gravity can do the rest until it needs to be moved again:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0132.jpg
(You can see another slab from the same tree behind the piece for contrast)

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0133.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0134.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0131.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0129.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d2...r/IMGP0128.jpg

Just looking at these pictures, the orientation of the imperfections/bark etc in the strut frame make it look a bit 'pigeon toed', which is a shame. It's pretty much dead-square. I'll have to pay attention to that next time.

Oh, and when those pictures were taken I hadn't 'rubbed out' the top at that stage... D'oh.

Questions, comments and criticisms (be gentle) are very welcome. Thanks for looking/reading!

Regards,
Matt.