Friday, March 4, 2011

a coffee table in reclaimed lumber

Finally got our coffee table done in the living room here. Our new cat Tux represents:



The top is a three part lamination of vertical grained doug fir that I recovered from Urban Ore:





I wanted to do breadboard ends and made some out of an old sign post of very ring dense material...i think it's redwood since it's very light weight...not the best structurally but fun to work. These ends would be attached using draw-bored pegs made of wood dowels with the outermost holes widened a bit across the grain to account for moisture expansion in the top. No glue here.










With the top structure done, it was time to work with the legs. I opted for through-tenons that would be wedged once glued up. These legs were stocky, so they would want to be shaped up





A bandsaw would have been handy:





Here's the leg glue-up. You can see the wedges I pounded into slots cutting into the tennons. You can also see a slight bumpy texture in the top. That was done using my scrub plane. Sarah and I wanted something rough hewn with some texture to it.



Now with with 2 coats of tongue oil