# side table



## nabs (10 Oct 2017)

the time has come to try and make an actual bit of furniture using hand tools. I am attempting a suitably straightforward piece given my inexperience (a side table) and will be ably assisted by Richard Maquire, albeit virtually:

http://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/the ... le-guides/

I cheated and got a bit of sawn elm from St Albans Wood Recycling - a far less intimidating place to rifle through bits of wood than a proper timber yard, but not a cheap place for non-reclaimed stuff. There are two large knots about a 1/3rd of the way down, but I was just able to get enough for the bits I need from it. I *nearly* managed to avoid the sap wood for the top, but there is a small amount on one edge which I hope will be removed when I finish the top.







I did use sap wood for two of the legs, but there is not a lot of difference in colour between it and the heartwood and they will be stained black anyhow, so I hope this won't be a problem. Not a lot to report about prepping the wood other than remembering what I had learned (and subsequently forgotten) when making my bench, which is when 'being careful' starts to become 'being tentative' then things tend to work out badly. But after doing the top (slowly!) my confidence was restored somewhat and I did a more efficient job of the other bits.






This was my first attempt at jointing and gluing two boards - I added a bit of 'spring' as instructed and held it together with one clamp. I think the resulting glue line is ok but I should probably reserve judgment until I finish the top . Having looked in the morning the glued board now has a fairly noticeable cup in it - I hope this is just the wood moving after I planed it (the boards were flat originally, honestt!) rather than incompetent jointing, but tbh I am not sure.






The joinery is going to be with bridle joints, which are a bit a mortice and tennon but with the top of the mortice lopped off. This is quite exciting as I have never done a m&t joint, and if I can pull off some of these I think I will be about 2/3rds of the way to the real thing!






Apparently bridle joints can be time consuming because you need to get an accurate fit to avoid it looking tatty and can't rely so much on compressing the wood fibres as you might with a m&t (too tight fit will cause the sides of the mortice to push apart). 

To simply matters Mr Maquire has devised some simple guides to cut these joints with, so the next job is to make those. If you want more details on the guides, plans etc they can be found in the excellent video series above, which can be downloaded for a modest fee of £26.


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## Bm101 (10 Oct 2017)

Subbed Nabs. Never a chore to read of your efforts.


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## custard (11 Oct 2017)

Full credit to you Nabs for giving this project a shot. I've just glanced at the finished product and you've picked a winner, that's a very nice design and I'm sure you'll get a lot of lot of compliments and probably quite a few "repeat orders"! 

You say the legs are stained black, looking at the extreme depth of black achieved I'm wondering if they're done with a tannic acid/steel wool/white vinegar stain? If not that's something you might want to consider, nothing else quite delivers the same inky blackness.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll be as pleased as punch with the finished result!


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## nabs (12 Oct 2017)

custard":1pw3uie3 said:


> I'm wondering if they're done with a tannic acid/steel wool/white vinegar stain? If not that's something you might want to consider, nothing else quite delivers the same inky blackness.



yes that is exactly how he does it - in the videos he has some close ups of the finished stained legs and it is remarkable just how deep black they are (as Maquire says, 'almost like plastic)'. I am looking forward to seeing how mine turn out


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## custard (12 Oct 2017)

Looking at the photo on RM's website it appears he made his legs from a close grained wood like Maple or Beech. You however are using open grained Elm. So one thing you'll need to do when you stain, that RM didn't necessarily have to do, is to add one single drop of washing up liquid to both your tannin solution and to your acetic acid solution. If you don't then surface tension will prevent you getting the solutions deep into the pores and so you'll be left with little pale spots all over the job. Somewhere on the forum I did a WIP on how I scorched then wire wool/venegar stained the Oak legs on this desk,






I'm sure RM will cover the process, but he may omit the washing up liquid tip if he's assuming close grained stock, where as for Elm (or Oak) it's important.

Good luck!


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## nabs (12 Oct 2017)

many thanks - I don't recall him mentioning that, although I may have missed it. You may have to remind me again nearer the time!


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## nabs (12 Oct 2017)

The bridle joint guides are obviously optional, but are simple to make. Despite that I managed to balls up the first set - the errors at least meant I learned how they worked and the second set were done much quicker as a result.

There are plenty of details on the guides in the video series (which I'd encourage you to buy, the guides are worth the entrance fee alone!) and a quick overview in the introduction here: http://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/new ... le-guides/.

The saw needs to run against the side of the guide + the depth of the joint so you may find your back-saws are not deep enough. I was left between a choice between my two panel saws - the first (S&J) would probably have worked tbh, but I concluded it was a bit rough for the job, the second (Thomas Taylor) should have been perfect, but unfortunately it still has the last vestiges of a bend + a kink which despite my best efforts I have never been able to completely remove, and this makes it no good for doing anything very precise. A pity as it is a beautifully made saw.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and this was a great excuse to get a new saw. RM happened to have been experimenting with japanese saws when doing the side-table vids, so I copied him and got myself a cheapo (20 quid) one to try out. 

It is perfect for the job and I really like using it - it seems to work best if you adopt the stance of an elderly butler prodding a sausage on a BBQ (arms length and with one hand behind your back) - great fun. The saw probably has a proper Japanese name but I am afraid I do not know what it is.






Japanese saws seem to be a vast undiscovered (for me) tool-fidding rabbit hole, so I have decided not to research the topic any further 

Here is a test joint - admittedly with softwood so I had a bit more margin for error than when I do the real thing, but not a bad effort for a beginner I think (the worst bit is my skew-whiff attempt to square the bottom of the mortice with a chisel). 

As I have just proved the guides are silly person proof - you just mark the depth of the joints, saw against each guide and finally chop out the center bit from the mortice and bingo it all fits. An ingenious idea from RM!


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## rafezetter (13 Oct 2017)

nabs":mf6x5xde said:


> custard":mf6x5xde said:
> 
> 
> > I'm wondering if they're done with a tannic acid/steel wool/white vinegar stain? If not that's something you might want to consider, nothing else quite delivers the same inky blackness.
> ...



Can I add my small experience with oak and homemade eboniser - below pic is a fairly strong mix that was left for quite some time - about a month and adding more steel wool after 2 weeks, and the wood was freshly sanded (if the wood has been stored a while I'm led to beleive the exposed bare surface can oxidise reducing the effectiveness of this method) and 1 application.

I've read if you are going for truly inky black if it's not enough after first application to wash with a solution of "elm bark powder" which is very high in tannins and reapply the eboniser.


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## nabs (18 Oct 2017)

thanks for the tip Rafezetter! RM also has his own special recipe so I'll let you know how I get on.

I did the joinery at the weekend - made a couple of mistakes: overshot when cutting one shoulder and accidentally pushed out a chunk of the bottom edge of a mortice when 'tidying it up' with a chisel (luckily not on the show face). 

I am not too dispirited by what seems like a constant stream of blunders as I think I am slowly improving, and feel pretty sure if I do another one the it would be better.

The guides were a big help - the joints were a little tight compared to the tests in pine but a couple of passes with a block plane on the tenons sorted it out quickly.







blunder


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## sundaytrucker (20 Oct 2017)

I am looking forward to seeing this come together. If your bench build is anything to go by then the side table will be a success.


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## AndyT (20 Oct 2017)

+1.
Looks good, and very satisfying too.


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## nabs (25 Oct 2017)

finally got round to doing a bit more on the table:

the two cross rails are held by a halving joint, which luckily does not have to be super precise since a small amount of wiggle room is needed to allow the top to expand and contract (one of my saw cuts was a bit wonky, which should cover it!)

The other job was to taper the inside edge of the legs to make them look a bit more dainty - a simple job with a bench plane.

That's all the joinery done so hopefully nothing really serious can go awry from this point onwards. Quite probably I will come to regret making that remark


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## custard (25 Oct 2017)

Excellent job, you must be delighted with that.

=D>


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## John15 (25 Oct 2017)

Looking very good Nick. I like the angled legs.

John


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## DTR (25 Oct 2017)

Looking good so far! =D>


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## nabs (26 Oct 2017)

thanks all (btw John15, I can't take any credit for the design, but I agree the legs in particular are very effective).

Glued the legs on - a top tip from RM is to use hide glue. As has been discussed on this forum in the past, PVA can swell the joints and this can apparently can make tight fitting ones (as the bridle joints must be) problematic. My experience with glue ups is limited to my bench and saw horse where I used PVA, but because the tolerances in the joints were fairly 'generous'  there was no problem at all. 

I could however feel the difference since the hide glue is not at all 'grabby', unlike the PVA, and this meant it was possible to get on without the sensation that it would suddenly jam forever stuck in the wrong position.

A very good side effect of the bridle joints is you end up with lots of small squares of wood from the mortices and these are very handy for protecting your work from clamps, holdfasts etc.


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## AndyT (26 Oct 2017)

I agree about the glue - it's what I normally use - and I also have a box of little offcuts like that.


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## nabs (27 Oct 2017)

good news and bad news this morning - the joints turned out okay, but I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to cut the aprons to the correct length having cut them longer than needed expecting to trim them to length later. This is a pretty disappointing cock-up, even by my standards! The aprons are about 19 1/2'' compared to the expected 18''. 






In theory the legs/apron will now be out of proportion compared to the top, but I have a cunning plan. The top is about 1/2'' bigger than needed all round and I'll keep as much of it as I can, also I had already planned to cut the legs shorter than Mr Maquire's plan so hopefully this will stop them sticking out beyond the top. If all else fails I'll just have to make another top, which at least is a reasonably quick task.

After trimming the joints, this morning's jobs were to flatten and smooth the face surface of the top (the underneath will eventually be steeply tapered along all the edges so it is easier to do the smoothing now than have it wobbling around on the workbench later on)

To my untrained eye the glued panel looks okay (is it?!) but it is a pity about the small black knots (I plan to say they add character ).






finally I rounded over the legs and cut them to length. I was a bit apprehensive about doing the round over as I had not done it before, but I relaxed once I realized that it did not matter if they were all identical (they aren't but it is almost impossible to tell by looking once it is put together).






Have my oversized aprons and stumply table legs ruined the elegant Maquire design? Tune in tomorrow to find out!


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## AndyT (27 Oct 2017)

I strongly suspect that the answer is "No."
And I really like the look of that top!


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## custard (27 Oct 2017)

nabs":2dlvpyn7 said:


> To my untrained eye the glued panel looks okay (is it?!) but it is a pity about the small black knots (I plan to say they add character ).



Looks great! In particular you've managed the grain to advantage. Your boards are the typical flat sawn boards, with "cathedral" grain in the centre and rift sawn, straighter grain out at the edges. You've carefully chosen sections where you can drop the joint into that straight grained section and kept it all nicely balanced. 

Incidentally when you get those pin knots in Oak boards they're called "pippy boards", a few years ago pippy boards were much cheaper than clear boards, but now they command a premium of about 20%. So the market has voted with its wallet, and pin knots are what the market wants!

Smashing job.


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## nabs (28 Oct 2017)

thanks all! Here is it with the top on - I think I have got away with the proportions despite the aforementioned cock-up on the aprons!

to finish the top you create a 2'' deep taper on each edge of the underside, leaving about 1/4'' on the edge. Quite simple to do really, although while I was paying a lot of attention to the gauge lines on the edge I over ran the one of the lines showing where to stop at the top of the taper. I doubt it will never be noticed (apart from by me!) but a bit sloppy.


the next job is to do the ebonized finish on the legs.
todays top tip is via Cstanford of this forum - I used wood shavings to clean my hands after sharpening (it really works). With hindsight this is a more obvious solution than walking back to the house to wash my hands, but it never occurred to me  







PS in preparation for ebonizing the legs I have left a handful of wire wool soaking in pickling vinegar for a week but rather than going black as per Mr Maquires video destructions it has gone sort of dirty brown colour. Am I doing it wrong!?


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## Bm101 (29 Oct 2017)

Not sure Nabs. For derusting at least it's suggested you use white vinegar, don't know if this would make any difference? Vinegar purity? I'm straying into the unknown! Excellent work mate.


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## Phil Pascoe (29 Oct 2017)

It will be brownish in a jar - until it hits tannin. I suspect citric acid might be better - I don't know, I'll try it next time. The acid content of some white vinegars is only 4% (they're often marked "not to be used for pickling" for this reason) - I don't know whether that makes much difference. Try it on scrap if you have doubts. I believe it was Custard who mentioned using tea or oak leaves (or oak apples) to up the tannin.


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## custard (29 Oct 2017)

nabs":3l7rk6fd said:


> in preparation for ebonizing the legs I have left a handful of wire wool soaking in pickling vinegar for a week but rather than going black as per Mr Maquires video destructions it has gone sort of dirty brown colour. Am I doing it wrong!?



No, that's okay. Leave it long enough to settle after filtering and it may well start to go clear, but it'll still do the job.

Incidentally, you may find the initial results are a browny-maroon colour rather than black, but when the finish is applied or even with heavy burnishing it goes black. Here's a piece I ebonised alongside a fully finished sample that shows that pre-finished colour you may get. I'm working outside not because of the staining process, but because the Oak was scorched with a blow torch immediately before ebonising.


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## custard (29 Oct 2017)

phil.p":1r5iipa0 said:


> I believe it was Custard who mentioned using tea or oak leaves (or oak apples) to up the tannin.



It's ground up Oak Galls, they give a slightly deeper "blue-black" result than strong tea, but I've done it lots of different ways and tea is fine. 

The key thing is that even with Oak you'll need to increase the tannin content of the wood. It's almost as if the tannin evaporates out from the surface of the wood, because freshly cut Oak ebonises well, but Oak that's been sitting around in your workshop is patchy at best.


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## nabs (30 Oct 2017)

here are the results of my first experiments with ebonizing:

This is with 3 application of the tannin 'tea' and shows the reaction after about 10 minutes (the two paler blotches are where I did not apply any tannin solution). On the bottom I used an iron solution based on apple cider vinegar and the top is based on 6% pickling vinegar. The apple cider reaction was much quicker (despite the wire wool only having had a couple of days to stew) which I suppose must indicate it is more acidic than the pickling vinegar (which had stewed for about 7 days).






Anyhow, although it was still getting darker I could tell it was not going to be good enough. A bit later on I applied a second coating of the tannin solution and while it was still wet added some more iron solution - things are much improved but still not the kind of deep black I hope to get. This is it after an hour (it is still getting darker, I think):






... so I have mixed the sediment from the pickling vinegar into the more promising apple cider concoction and plan to do 4 coats of tannin on the table legs before applying the iron solution. Hopefully this will be good enough, but if not I'll do a second coat.


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## will1983 (30 Oct 2017)

That looks good, quite a transformation! Do you plan to then overcoat it with another product?
An oil over the top would help to darken the finish.


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## nabs (30 Oct 2017)

yes, the final step is to buff the surface and apply a hard wax oil.


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## custard (30 Oct 2017)

nabs":1xqbzl5z said:


> things are much improved but still not the kind of deep black I hope to get



It's astonishing the difference that a final finish coat (oil, wax, shellac, whatever you're planning) will make. It'll be a much more intense black when that final coat is on. Even burnishing with a coarse rag or a handful of shavings will make a difference.


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## nabs (1 Nov 2017)

this is what the legs looked like after I had applied 4 coats of tannin solution and then tannin followed by iron solution x2. The one on the right has had a quick rub with a cloth. We'll have to see how it looks with the oil finish on, but it does look quite a deep blue/black even at this stage.


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## DTR (1 Nov 2017)

That colour is amazing!


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## nabs (1 Nov 2017)

as predicted by Custard, applying the top coat makes it go a deeper jet black - will post the final result tomorrow when there is better light to take a pic


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## SteveF (1 Nov 2017)

that is going to look fantastic
looking forward to finished article
Steve


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## nabs (2 Nov 2017)

bit hard to tell with my crappy camera phone/lack of photographic abilities but following the application of a couple of layers of wax oil the legs are now jet black. Final pic of the finished table tomorrow...


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## will1983 (3 Nov 2017)

Very impressive, just should be very proud.


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## nabs (3 Nov 2017)

thanks Will.

Here is the finished table - the ebonizing process shows up a few bumps and scratches that were not obvious when the wood was paler, but overall I am pleased with the result.






This is a good beginners project I think - it is straightforward but the simple design encourages you to work as precisely as you are able. 

It was also very satisfying to be able to make a useful bit of furniture out of a single piece of rough sawn timber just using hand tools. A good fun project and I learned a lot doing it.

Here is the table next to the one it will replace - I think mine is better, although admittedly I have set myself a rather low bar to jump over  






Finally, thanks again to Richard Maquire for the very good table design and excellent video instruction. For others learning on your own, please consider buying some of his videos - I am sure you won't be disappointed.

http://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/pre ... eo-series/

Before pic:


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## MusicMan (3 Nov 2017)

Very nice work and really well finished.

Keith


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## DTR (3 Nov 2017)

That looks great, very nicely done =D>


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## galleywood (3 Nov 2017)

A very nice job.
It looks good just on its own and is set off by your decor.
I have bought the plans from Richard, but not started yet - what you have done will spur me on.


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## AndyT (3 Nov 2017)

That looks marvellous!

=D> =D> =D>


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## Sheffield Tony (3 Nov 2017)

Yay, who needs noisy power tools anyway. Good job. The black is very striking. I like the thought that because it is a stain, it should still _feel_ like wood.

Is the top held on just with screws in oversized holes ?


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## nabs (3 Nov 2017)

it is just screwed on - apparently using a slightly gappy halving joint in the aprons is enough to allow the wood in the top to move. Do oversized holes do the same thing (or are they needed as well?!)


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## Sheffield Tony (3 Nov 2017)

nabs":3137vo9j said:


> apparently using a slightly gappy halving joint in the aprons is enough to allow the wood in the top to move.



Looking back, I see I missed that bit, I'd assumed the central joint was glued rigid.


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## cowfoot (3 Nov 2017)

Lovely job!


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