I recently did away with the two-drawer lateral file cabinet in my office (who need to store paper anymore?!) and installed a nice, comfortable chair for reading and for keeping me away from the computers during conference calls that I really need to pay attention to.
It's shown in the first picture below...unfortunately, I really need a very small side table to set the latté cup down, etc. And hey...I have a shop and tools! And lot's of nice scraps from previous project. So after giving the grass a little haircut, I got my butt in the shop (for a change) and started a quickie project for the weekend: a Small Side Table.
Now, even though my office is in the 250 year old portion of our home and has wide pine floors, a fireplace and 20" windowsills, the furniture is somewhat modern--all being from Ikea other than the "matching" credenza that I scarfed when a local office was closed a number of years ago by my employer. So given that as well as the small size table I needed, I decided to something that is "simple modern" would fit the bill. It will be 18" high which is just perfect for this chair.
I had some nice 9/16" thick black walnut (off the property) left over from my Shaker style clock project from awhile back and will be using that for the top. It was nearly wide enough as is, but I decided to trim off some less-than-perfect edges and join another board to it. The seam is nearly invisible due to careful grain matching. I have not decided on the shape of the top yet, but it will be either oval or some other elongated form...to balance best on the simple tripod base. (In our house, three-leg designs work a million times better than four due to the uneven floors)
Speaking of which, since all the furniture is black or supported by a black beam structure, the base of this table will also be black. So it's made out of scrap 1/2" MDF which is perfect for the task. To make things "interesting" I decided to cant the whole thing 10º and have the table top over hang longer in one direction. In other words, I was just faddling and a little flash went off in my lately-overwhelmed brain when I though of making things other than straight up and down. And if it didn't work out...the $1.50 worth of MDF is no great loss.
So, I glued up the blank for the top, cut the parts out for the base, rounded the edges slightly with the OF 1010 (wonderful for machining MDF...no dust escapes!) and then glued things up. Tomorrow, final sanding of the base and paint and dealing with the top.
Pics:
1) New reading chair...it really needs a small table to its right
2) Top blank is glued up
3) Fitting the third "leg"
4) Final "leg" angled worked out
5) Completed base..glued up and ready for final sanding and black paint
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I doub I would be making anything quite that "dainty", as my 32oz. coffee mug wouldn't take real kindly to it!
Originally Posted by John Miliunas
