A couple months back, I posted my first completed woodworking project in the hopes reviewing my first full year building furniture with a sort-of retrospective of the past year's work. It was the holidays and I got busy, but now I'm gonna try to get some project pictures up finally. So my second project was this mahogany bedside table.
When my wife got pregnant with our first child she was studying to become a midwife at Emory University and she asked her favorite professor to be with her in labor and help her through the process. Her professor/friend agreed and wouldn't accept any payment, so my wife asked that my contribution be to build Sarah a piece of furniture. Hey, how many of you wouldn't rather spend 30 hours in the shop than endure the pains of childbirth?
So, after consulting with Sarah about what she needed/wanted, getting some pictures of the bedroom where it would go etc., I found a pretty cool design by Steve Latta in FWW. The design called for real mahogany for the top, drawer, and legs, with plywood for the sides and shelves. The plywood is faced with edge banding. The tapered octagonal legs are made by cutting tapered squares on the table saw, then turning them into octagons on the jointer with the fence set at 45. I thought that would be the toughest part of the project, but it was really a piece of cake.
The hardest part was fitting it all together. The plan dictated joining the sides to the legs with biscuits. I wasn't crazy about this and I had a tough time getting it all to "draw up" and fit just right. Even though my pieces were cut accurately, it was tough to pull together at clamp up time. With a little luck and some truck tie downs wrapped around the whole thing, it came out tighter than I thought it would.It was also my first attempt at half blind dovetails. This was also less daunting than I had thought at first. I wished I had spaced them a little more randomly so they looked more handmade.
The biggest screw-up on this piece was related to the top. I glued up the top using biscuits, but when I went to the tablesaw to cut the angle on the underside of the top, I realized that one of my biscuit slots showed through. Doh! Stupid, stupid, stupid! For this and other reasons, I really don't like using biscuits for furniture. There's no sense in them. I don't think it makes the joint stronger, and it really doesn't do a great job of lining things up anyway.
As it turns out, my old man came to the rescue. I called him and confessed my mistake, and it turns out he just happened to have a panel lying around his shed that would work. And instead of African mahogany, it was Honduran, and oh, what a difference an ocean makes. Its truly works beautifully. Man.....That's about it. As you'll hopefully see in future installments, after this piece I returned to more traditional forms and joinery, but this was a nice diversion. Oh, and that's my daughter Evangeline on the bottom shelf there.
All in all, I think I got a pretty good deal.
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