Thread: Mid century modern bedside table

Wanted to make a post about the first "nice" piece of proper furniture I've ever made. I made plenty of mistakes along the way and learned a lot, but I'd love to hear any tips for my next piece.

After demolishing a shade awning that stood next to my house, I salvaged from the ruins a few lengths of fairly nice brushbox(?). The paint did not contain lead, and the timber was most likely untreated, so I thought it would make for nice project wood. And so it sat under my house for a few months while I schemed...

Using Shapr3D on my iPad I came up with a design for a mid-century modern inspired bedside table. I wanted something with an open shelf for storing said iPad, mitred corners, and a cool leg design. The overall style was strongly inspired by this set of bedside tables made by Keith of the Rag'n'bone YouTube channel.

IMG_0041.jpgIMG_0009.jpg

From there I started turning the painted timber into pieces suitable for panel glue-ups. I removed the paint with a power hand planer, and milled it all to size on my planer thicknesser combo.

IMG_5866.jpgIMG_5868.jpgIMG_6082.jpg

This was my first time gluing up panels of this size, so I had a few false starts. One panel had the individual boards cup significantly after glue up, which necessitated ripping it back down and gluing up again. Luckily I'd left the panel big enough! Not pictured here is me painstakingly filling all the bug holes, cracks and defects with black epoxy, which took way too long and was not fun at all.

IMG_6084.jpgIMG_6091.jpeg

I sorted through the panels and figured out which would go where, with the prettiest panel on the top face and the ugliest sides inside where they wouldn't be seen. I cut the boards to size, checked my mitres (needed a second pass to get them perfect), cut slots for the shelf, then glued up the carcass. This was extremely nerve wracking! and despite a practice run I still managed to get the thing slightly out of square.

IMG_6137.jpeg

Fortunately I was able to pull it back into square when I attached the back panel. This thing was actually starting to come together!

IMG_6138.jpgIMG_6145.jpeg

I quickly threw together some drawer boxes out of plain old dressed pine and 6mm hardwood ply. After the mission that was building the carcass I was not in the mood to go overboard with the drawers.

IMG_6149.jpg

I cut the leg pieces on the mitre saw and bodged together a simple jig to cut the taper on the table saw. I initially planned to join the legs using dowels, and bought a Milescraft dowel jig to get that done. Getting a good result from the thing was impossible - it just didn't have the precision that I needed. I did one "okay" leg with the dowels. For the other joins I used a simple router jig and cut mortices for floating tenons, and I got those 3 legs done in the same amount of time it took me to do 1 leg with dowels.

IMG_6160.jpegIMG_6161.jpegIMG_6182.jpegIMG_6183.jpgIMG_6189.jpeg

Finally, I attached the legs to the carcass with long bolts and finished it with 3 coats of satin oil based varnish. The drawers got 3 coats of Danish oil.

IMG_6221.jpegIMG_6196.jpegIMG_6197.jpeg

I'm quite happy with how it came out. Except for the drawer pulls, which were advertised on Etsy as "brass" but are actually thin anodised aluminium. They just cheapen the feel of the whole thing. I'm still on the hunt for some nice brass half-moon handles to replace them with.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.