A small side table without a top !

[David Keast]

A friend has a dining table with two lift out leaves to extend it, only his room is not long enough to fully extend the table. He asked me to use the spare leaf to make a small side table in cherry in a similar style.
The leaf is around 1m by 50cm. This is the result :

Marking out the cherry (called Merisier here) boards



Cutting the tenons on the apron pieces



Making the legs - these are made in 3 pieces, top, leg and foot, all glued up in two layers, planed, profiled etc, then m & t together.




Then legs and apron essembled into ends



Then finally fully assembled with shelves "breadboarded into the side stretchers (and moldings added later - not shown here - to prevent stuff sliding off the back).



Looks like I forgot to photograph it with its top on - next time I visit him..........

[Kent A Bathurst]

Très beau travail

[Phil Thien]

Clever solution and very nice work.

Do you have to match the finish?

Can we see some pics after that is completed?

[David Keast]

Yes, good question. Since it was for a friend, I explained that trying to match the finish would be a nightmare and said I was not keen to do it. He agreed to do the finshing himself, he has loads of offcuts to experiment on, all the time in the world - he is retired, and I've given him links to various articles on finishing cherry ! !

Like you, I'm keen to see the result. For the moment he is still trying out stains to match the colour.

[Phil Thien]

Yes, good question. Since it was for a friend, I explained that trying to match the finish would be a nightmare and said I was not keen to do it. He agreed to do the finshing himself, he has loads of offcuts to experiment on, all the time in the world - he is retired, and I've given him links to various articles on finishing cherry ! !

Like you, I'm keen to see the result. For the moment he is still trying out stains to match the colour.

It will be interesting to see how the finish comes out.

I feel finishing is one of my greatest (among many) weaknesses.

Matching a finish? Forget about it. I'd just as soon strip the first piece and finish them both identically. And I couldn't want to do that, I just would know that it would come out better than me trying to match anything.

Who knows, your friend may have a knack for finishing. I've seen stranger things happen.

Regardless, looking forward to seeing the end result. I know it will be awesome.