Thread: WIP Bedside Tables

I managed to eek out 6 fairly straight grained blanks for the legs plus another one that included a considerable portion of sapwood. Needing at least one more leg I decided to glue up some of the trimmings to make two more so I can decide later if I keep the sapwood one or not.
legBlank3.jpg

I like the proportions of the cabinet, and I think that's partly due to the marked transfer from straight to taper in the legs.

Hi Alex, I was concerned when building the original lamp table the dimensions of the legs were going to be too delicate, but it really turned out better than I expected. Given the minimal cross section of the legs the tables are not something robust you'd be wanting to be shoving across the floor and it is why I've been paying extra attention trying to get straight grain in the leg blanks.

I finally got around to milling some of the wider boards needed for the tops and sides from the thick boards I have. Not having access to anything better I loaded up the 12" blade in my saw and ran kerfs down both edges of the boards leaving an uncut few cm down the centre. I then finished the rips by handsawing the remaining web.

All went well although I always feel somewhat anxious doing these sorts of cuts on the table saw. I don't like seeing that much spinning blade.

kerfed.jpg kerfed2.jpg

I've got lazy and been relying on using a good wide spiral head thicknesser at the Men's shed for my last couple of projects. The shed having closed for the duration however I've had to fall back to using my own machinery for the milling and acknowledge my very average quality machines mean I'll have to revert to doing much more hand tool work for the rest of the stock preparation. I see an extended sharpening session on the horizon in the next few days. My thicknesser will only do 250mm max and has fairly blunt blades as well. The cabinet sides and tops are all wider than that and will have to be hand thicknessed and finish planed by hand after glue up.

I clamped the legs up to stop them cupping after I cut them, but the offcuts showed no signs of movement so I haven't bothered clamping things down this time. The timber is all really dry as it has been sitting in the dry garage for a few years now. I've just left things standing apart for a bit of air circulation after milling.

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Speaking of offcuts after cutting around the many faults in the boards and straightening up grain I'm finding myself with quite a large pile of odd shaped and grained bits and pieces. I hate to throw stuff out but I think I'm just going to have to do something about my overflowing shorts bins! I really can't see a lot of use for most of it!

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Finished the glueup of the side panels and tops. I've been using Gorilla Glue lately since I couldn't find Titebond III when I ran out of glue on my last project. It has a comparatively quick grab which seemed to cause me grief trying to line up the joins under clamp pressure. It seemed more slippery at first but then was more difficult a short time later when trying to persuade the boards to move a bit relative to each other. One wouldn't think it can get so difficult trying to align such short lengths! A bit of cleanup will be required to flatten the faces.
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I cut most of the timber from a single board that looked like it was the first one after the barked flitch was taken off. Quite a bit of sap wood on each side that had to come off and some borer holes. The worst thing though was the amount of swirling dipping and direction changing grain. After some considerable effort I've managed to cleaned up the outside faces of the panels with just a few minute bits of tearout. I wasn't really concentrating on dimensions while I was doing the planing but there was this little bit of doubt at the back of my mind.

I went ahead and dimensioned the side panels to the width I had written down and looked at them beside the legs wondering about the joint to use. Things didn't look right. I went back to the sketch and added up the width of drawers and rails again and came up with a figure 100mm narrower than what I had written down! Oh well at least I cut something too wide instead of too narrow for a change.

I stopped at that point and decided to do a full size paper plan and work from that rather than the cut and past image I'd created from the paint program I'd been playing around with originally.

The sides are going to be twin tenoned into the legs and when it came to working out how to cut them I decided that given it's such a wide joint I'd have a go at cutting them on the table saw. So first job was to make a sled. There are some really complicated tenon sled plans out there but this one seemed like it wasn't going to be too challenging to build. And it work!

tenonSled1.jpg tenonSled2.jpg

When it came to cutting the cheeks I didn't trust either my blade or my crosscut sled so I made those cuts by hand.
tenonCheek.jpg

The backs and sides have been tenoned and fitted to the legs. Next job will be rails in front for the two drawers.
twinTenon.jpg caseSides.jpg

Small steps between some other jobs taking my attention. The drawer rails have been added, the lower and middle rails are twin tenoned into the legs while the still to be fitted top rail drops dovetails into the legs. The drawer runners will be next, followed by tapering of the legs.
caseRails.jpg

Drawer framing completed and most joints finessed for fit. Next job will be to knock it all apart again and taper the legs.
runners.jpg

I'm expecting these to look very classy. Really looking forward to seeing the finished product Fuzzie.

For those who remember the first 10 minutes of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" you may roll the audio now...

Even though I thought I had studiously marked the faces for tapering the legs......

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This leg has been uncooperative all along. If you look at the left end you might also notice the other mistake that has required patching for far.



..and it had to be a front leg didn't it.

We feel your pain. I find that too large a portion of my woodworking time is spent on recovery from errors or just plain bad luck. Of course it's a front leg, where else would it be located?

Bad luck .
I was thinking, He's going to be triple checking that before he cuts it . Do them first and get the risky bit done before you invest the time with the rest of the work. It doesn't make any difference to cutting the mortises.

It may come up pretty good with the re join . If not , have you got enough wood for a thin veneer like covering to the whole front leg ?
It may be better. The bit where the patch tapers out leaves a wide patch of glue that stands out .

Rob