Here are two pics of a coffee table I finished recently
yCoffee table from side.jpg yCoffee table top.jpg
It's made of maple, cherry and ebony. The finish is a light coat of boiled linseed oil followed (immediately, before the BLO dried) with several coats of dewaxed, super-blond shellac. I applied the BLO with a rag, the shellac with a cotton pad. I then sprayed a few coats of Enduro clear satin Wat-R-Base (for protection) and finished off with Beall's three-stage abrasive and wax.
Were I to do it over, I would make a couple of changes. I made the interior of the top from three pieces of maple 3/16" thick that I resawed from a single board. No problem there, but I attached those boards to a piece of 3/4" plywood in a complicated and time-consuming way (to allow for wood movement). I should have just glued those boards to pieces of undistinguished 3/4" maple. Secondly, the maple ends are held in place with bolts. (Hence the ebony discs on the ends.) I think it would have been better to have used hidden tapered sliding dovetails. I could have done by having a couple at each end.
Cary