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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2014
    Location
    Seattle, Washington, USA
    Posts
    1,857

    Default Silver Ash Mid-Century Coffee Table

    I've recently joked a couple of times about needing to adopt a Danish pseudonym, because I've now built two different Danish Mid Century style coffee tables in a row. The most recent was a commission, but this one is for my place. My place which, I might add, houses a Minister for Domestic Tranquility who is a huge fan of Mid Century furniture... and who must be obeyed.

    The mid century style is not my favorite in many forms, but I do think that there are some great tables. I decided to adopt a couple of things from some of my favorites and kind of faux design my own.

    I'll start with the top. Some friends of ours in Brisbane turned me onto a designer that they really liked named Finn Juhl. After browsing his catalog, this table stuck out.

    ct043_1.jpg

    What I really like about that table is the edge treatment:

    coffee-table-by-finn-juhl-for-france-son-1960s-4.jpg

    So I decided I would make that a part of my table build.

    Initially, I'd wanted to make this table out of Crow's Ash (Flindersia australis). I have plenty to do it, and that was my intention when I started the build. I got to work gluing up my top, but I soon realized that the wood I had chosen was not Crow's Ash at all. It was sold to me as part of a two board lot. Supposedly, one board was Crow's Ash and the other was Silver Ash (Flindersia bourjotiana). I'd not really thought about building an entire piece of furniture out of Silver Ash, given that I only owned one board, albeit a large one (or so I thought). So the realization that I'd been working with it all along was bittersweet. I didn't get a table built out of my beloved Crow's Ash, but I did get to build a piece of furniture out of a wood I initially thought I wouldn't, so I'm marking it up as a win.

    I didn't have the option to rout out all of the material from a ~2" thick table top, so the sides which would have the edge treatment were appropriately spaced and edge glued on:

    IMG_0869.JPG

    I could've cut this moulded section in a variety of ways involving machines, but I didn't want to do that. The primary motivation was that doing that kind of thing on a table saw and router table is not really within the bounds of my skillset. I'm a hand tool guy, and this was going to be the foremost embellishment of this piece, so, obviously, I was going to cut it by hand.

    I started by tracing on the profile at all four corners:

    IMG_0870.JPG

    I would remove the bulk of the material with a series of rebates, which would be cut using lines defined by a snipe bill plane and a marking gauge, and with a wooden bodied rebate plane:

    IMG_0871.JPGIMG_0872.JPG

    Bench planes (Scrub, jack, jointer, smoother) were used to hog off the outer waste, and then hollows and rounds were used to define the curves, then shop-made, profiled scrapers were used to clean up the curves before sanding to completion.

    IMG_0873.JPGIMG_0874.JPGIMG_0875.JPG

    Happy with the results:

    IMG_0876.JPG

    I wasn't a huge fan of the undercarriage of the Finn Juhl table, so I went elsewhere for inspiration. I'm a Hans Wegner fan, and I was immediately drawn to this table, which is model AT-10:

    Wegner.jpg
    Simple, elegant, and functional, with a woven second tier that is definitive Danish Mid Century. I decided I would recreate something very similar with the Juhl top.

    I started by joining the upper, side aprons to the legs. The aprons were too wide for half-blind dovetails, so I went with haunched mortise and tenon joints. I figured if they work at the corners of a frame and panel door, then why not at the corners of an open-sided frame?

    IMG_0900.JPGIMG_0901.JPG

    The center stretchers along the length of the table would be joined into the legs with blind M&T joints, with a reveal at the sides. They would also need to be slotted for the weave to pass through at the end. I cut these slots using plunge cuts on a table saw. This is done by carefully marking the ends of the slots, then raising the blade completely through the workpiece, then pushing to finish the cut. Clamps are placed on the fence to keep the board from taking off (although it's more stable than it sounds like it could be...

    IMG_0906.jpg

    The long stretchers were joined into the legs and then four shorter stretchers placed across the width in a full mortise and tenon construction. I also crosscut the top to a visually proportional length with the blade at a ten degree bevel. I then put a slight taper on the legs when viewed from the ends and routed a roundover on all four sides of each leg. (also around 5-10 degrees):

    IMG_0918.jpgIMG_0919.jpg

    At this stage, I completely sanded and finished the table using two coats of Danish Oil (appropriate...) and two coats of a wipe-on Poly for protection. The final step in the process was to weave the second tier. I liked the Wegner table with the wicker, but I wanted something distinct and unique, and I wasn't going for a reproduction, so I decided to do a traditional Danish seat weave using three-strand Danish paper cord. This process turned out to be remarkably easy. It's all about the strategic spacing and use of hook-shaped nails to direct the weave. Here are some action shots weaving the "warp strands" and wrapping the stretchers:

    IMG_0929.JPGIMG_0930.JPGIMG_0931.JPG

    The middle of this table has two closely spaced stretchers. Initially I was just going to wrap them, but I decided to get creative, and discovered it's actually fairly easy to have fun with this stuff. I decided to use an "X" pattern which would be an homage to the Wegner original:

    IMG_0933.JPG

    I liked what I had, so I wove a few strands on either side to get actual perspective on what it would look like:

    IMG_0935.JPG

    I was ok with that, but, ultimately, I didn't like how every other warp strand was raised up higher. I thought it looked odd and unintentional (which it was). So this is what I decided to do to make it look cleaner and more deliberate:

    IMG_0936.JPG

    I was happy with it at that point, so I continued on, until the undercarriage looked like this:

    IMG_0953.JPG

    All in all about six hours of work on the weave. Totally worth it. It turned out great, was fun and physical (remarkably physical), and was a great departure from standard shop time.

    A few screws through the aprons into the top and voila:

    IMG_0955.JPGIMG_0959.JPGIMG_0960.JPGIMG_0962.JPGIMG_0963.JPG

    I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I think that proportionally it works, and that it captures the elegant functionality I was going for. Girlfriend loves it too.

    A bit of commentary on the wood, as I always feel somewhat obligated to give... This wood is really beautiful. It has a lot of figuring and reversing grain, but was still super stable and solid. I did, however, find it a bit finicky to work. It was prone to tearout when planing, and I also found it somewhat difficult to remove the previous grit when sanding (by hand, admittedly, and only after heavy scraping). It did, however, scrape very well, which is always a blessing. For anyone looking to build light colored furniture, I would absolutely recommend Silver Ash, but I cannot recommend it as highly as its heavy, hard cousin, Crow's Ash, or its other relative, the poster child for easy-to-work, reliable wood, Queensland Maple (Flindersia brayleyana). Just my opinion though.

    Next project is a dresser and, possibly, a matching lingerie chest.

    Thanks for reading!

    Cheers,
    Luke
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  3. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    Buderim qld
    Posts
    842

    Default

    Great handcrafted work, Luke.

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2001
    Location
    Perth
    Posts
    10,810

    Default

    Great work on the Danish Cord, Luke. I bet that was physical!! How long did it take?

    Do you think that you could make this piece for sale, and what changes would you consider to make it a financial preposition?

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Visit www.inthewoodshop.com for tutorials on constructing handtools, handtool reviews, and my trials and tribulations with furniture builds.

  5. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Darkest NSW
    Posts
    3,197

    Default

    Fantastic work - love the result

  6. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Location
    Melbourne, Vic, Australia
    Posts
    1,255

    Default

    Great job! So much for never using the snipe bill planes!

  7. #6
    Join Date
    Jun 2014
    Location
    Seattle, Washington, USA
    Posts
    1,857

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by DomAU View Post
    Great job! So much for never using the snipe bill planes!
    Touche . That was the first time I'd used them outside of practice. Rarely used, but when the job is right for them, they do it great. Admittedly, I usually cut rebates without them by just cocking the plane at 45deg and placing the corner into the gauge line until I can rotate it down to 90deg, but widening the gauge line with the snipe bill is far more accurate and less prone to slippage. This was important for this job.

    Derek, the weave probably took me five hours, plus a couple of hours in front of the computer spent researching how to do it, watching YouTube videos, and sourcing the supplies. I'm not sure how I would make this a more profitable endeavor. I suppose the most obvious step would be to jig the moulding somehow. I'm not a terribly jig-minded person, but I'd assume that this would require multiple table saw passes and some router table work, probably involving the table being stood up on its side. I guess you could cut the moulding on a spindle moulder/shaper before gluing it on, but that seems risky...

    I hand sawed all of the tenons, including their shoulders. If I had sawn the shoulders on the table saw and then just cut the cheeks at the bench then it probably would've saved me a bit of cleanup work, but I don't think it would've saved enough time to make it worth it. I already used a hollow chisel mortiser for the square mortises.

    Otherwise, orbital sanding, spray finishing, etc. would save time. Standard "professional" practices, but that's not really why I do it. Chances are, if someone asked me to recreate this table, I would just do it the same way and charge accordingly. I've probably got close to US$100 in the cord and US$180 in the wood. Tack on maybe twenty hours of work, and I'd never turn an actual profit from it, but I'd probably ask US$900-1200. Unless if was for a maaaaaaaate.

    Cheers,
    Luke

  8. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    Millmerran,QLD
    Age
    73
    Posts
    11,095

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    A very nice coffee table indeed Luke and a thoroughly comprehensive write up. Already looking forward to the next project.

    Regards
    Paul
    Bushmiller;

    "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"

  9. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Brisbane (western suburbs)
    Age
    77
    Posts
    12,093

    Default

    Struth, Luke, you are really in production mode, now! All that pent-up energy from waiting for your stuff to come across the Pacific, then being posted to the other side of the continent for the new job has got you going full-tilt!

    Nice table, and a very successful blending of 'borrowed' design ideas - I guess you could almost claim it as an 'original'?
    Cheers,
    IW

  10. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2016
    Location
    Brisbane
    Age
    57
    Posts
    1,311

    Default

    It's beautiful.
    How is the colour of the timber holding up?

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    My YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/2_KPRN6I9SE

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