Shaker Style Table

I thought I should share the latest woodworking piece just completed.

This is a Shaker style table in Vic Ash and Alpine Ash with a shelf, mostly hand tools work with tapered legs, tapered top and hand cut dovetails. It will be used as an occasional table. It has been a good learning project, plenty of head scratching and mistakes to learn from!

Apologies that I have not taken photos of all the steps.

Tapering legs. Tapered the first one using a hand plane. Other 3 were first cut on a bandsaw close to the line and then finished with a hand plane.
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Base glued up (Sorry, couldn't figure out why these images are appearing side ways, any ideas?)
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Base with drawer rails, spacers, runners and kickers glued.
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Fitting the dovetailed drawer. Few issues here a) drawer cavity was not square b) My dovetails skills were not the best c) I have never made and fit a drawer before. I took it to the wood school (MGFW) and was taken through the process. Outcome is pretty good.

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Finished table with couple of coats of Osmo PolyX Satin
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Here you go! Looking at the sideways images was doing my head in. :D Very nice job, if you made any mistakes they aren't apparent so I congratulate you on your recovery from error. Recovery is half the battle! :2tsup:

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I do! :2tsup:
I can't see the faults either. Looks good. I stressed out about a lot of little details when I made something similar so you are not alone with the head scratching!

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Originally Posted by aldav

Here you go! Looking at the sideways images was doing my head in. :D Very nice job, if you made any mistakes they aren't apparent so I congratulate you on your recovery from error. Recovery is half the battle! :2tsup:

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Thanks David! Can you please let me know how did you fix it? This has always bugged me.

P.S. Your clamps are doing very well as you can see in the photos!

I copied the full size images, pasted them in to 'Paint', rotated them 90 degrees to the right and saved them. This is a one at a time process. Uploading them though I was only able to select and upload one image at a time (very slow), although I have a memory of the last time I tried to upload multiple images at the one time resulting in a complete balls-up! :D I have noticed some posts on here concerning trouble uploading images, but I wasn't interested enough to have read them. :no: I just like technology to work, I don't want to know any of the finer details as to how it does it. :B

Ah...Thanks. That is painful indeed, agree it should just work but it does not... :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by saladonion

Ah...Thanks. That is painful indeed, agree it should just work but it does not... :rolleyes:

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The cause of this is because you have a beer fridge in your shed when it really should be in my shed.
Fortunately this can be solved.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Beautiful work. I like it a lot.

The grain direction of the top looks a bit unusual.

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Originally Posted by Wongo

The grain direction of the top looks a bit unusual.

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Its all the little decisions on an piece like this that makes it a great learning exercise. On mine I fretted about the grain orientation on the top and rails and how it fit with the available board widths. I pondered about using a setback for the rails on the legs and how much that should be. How much the legs should taper. How much edge to leave visible on the undercut top and really didn't know until it was all together how it panned out. I'm sure somebody somewhere has a little black book full of such notions but I couldn't find a concise good reference anywhere.

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Originally Posted by aldav

...if you made any mistakes they aren't apparent so I congratulate you on your recovery from error. Recovery is half the battle! :2tsup:

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Far as I'm concerned, if you fix it, it ain't a mistake!

The table looks great. I like the shelf. The first project I made which I considered "serious joinery" (previously I'd made some live edge stuff) was a pair of shaker side tables like this one. My girlfriend wanted me to make the shelf, but I got cold feet and didn't do it. I thought fitting the four corners sounded hairy given that the inside of the legs taper, so I applaud your boldness in tackling this.

My pair live on either side of my bed and I plan to keep them there for a long time. I think you and probably your grandkids will get just as much valuable use out of yours.

Cheers,
Luke

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Originally Posted by Wongo

Beautiful work. I like it a lot.

The grain direction of the top looks a bit unusual.

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Thanks! Top is from the same board, three pieces glued together. It was all straight grain stock. I chose to keep the darker grain in the middle instead of on the edge. In this lower resolution picture contrast is more pronounced though.

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Originally Posted by Fuzzie

Its all the little decisions on an piece like this that makes it a great learning exercise. On mine I fretted about the grain orientation on the top and rails and how it fit with the available board widths. I pondered about using a setback for the rails on the legs and how much that should be. How much the legs should taper. How much edge to leave visible on the undercut top and really didn't know until it was all together how it panned out. I'm sure somebody somewhere has a little black book full of such notions but I couldn't find a concise good reference anywhere.

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It certainly was a great learning experience. I fretted on all these and at times sat on some of these decisions for a bit. Some of the answers I found on the internet, some based on intuition and aesthetic. Rails are setback by couple of mills, taper starts couple centimetres below the shelf...

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Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

Far as I'm concerned, if you fix it, it ain't a mistake!

The table looks great. I like the shelf. The first project I made which I considered "serious joinery" (previously I'd made some live edge stuff) was a pair of shaker side tables like this one. My girlfriend wanted me to make the shelf, but I got cold feet and didn't do it. I thought fitting the four corners sounded hairy given that the inside of the legs taper, so I applaud your boldness in tackling this.

My pair live on either side of my bed and I plan to keep them there for a long time. I think you and probably your grandkids will get just as much valuable use out of yours.

Cheers,
Luke

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Thanks Luke! Appreciate your comments. I have learned a lot from this forum.

The shelf took a little bit to figure out. I thought of putting dowels in but ended up cutting a step on the corners and fitting it in a housing corner dado in the legs. Small gap on front left corner due to taking bit too much material off. Leg taper starts little lower and did a full size test piece in construction pine before tapering actual legs. I am really glad that I put the shelf in, supposed to hold the books while reading sitting next to it. My wife loves the table.

Next project is a hall table from this Camphor Laurel slab with floating top and curved legs in White Oak. Will post photos as it progresses.









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