Iroko & Sycamore - Arts & Crafts Side Table WIP

[ByronBlack]

Now that the workbench is finished, I can finally sink my teeth into a decent hand-tool fine furniture project. Her in doors has been on my ear-ole for months about a side table to have next to the sofa so she can put a cup of tea on it instead of leaving it on the floor where the cats can knock it over.

So, in light of that I present to you humble woodies my latest project (don't sigh please!) the side table: codenamed 'Libra'.

The wood for this project was all sourced on ebay as off-cuts, I have some nice sections of rippled sycamore (Won it for £7) and some staves of Iroko (£ 8.00). The Iroko will make up the legs and the table-top inset.

The sycamore will make up the rails, top supports and a mitre'd outer section to surround the Iroko 'inset' for the top.

Onto the pictures:

The recycled Iroko staves:

The sycamore boards:

Cutting leg pieces & top insert staves to rough length, using my new spanky workbench:

Staves for top insert cut:

Pieces of timber with parcel timber to keep the staves flat during glue-up

Glue-surfaces of all staves being jointed on el-rusto:

Thats it so far, the two pieces for the top insert are being glued up over night, tomorrow will see them thicknessed to final size and then glued-up to make the completed 310 x 310 top. The leg staves will then be glued together to give enough material to make the legs, these will then be thicknessed on saturday, sunday should see the mortices being cut and the sycamore components created.

 

[Mike.C]

Sounds nice Byron. Can't wait to see it.

Cheers

Mike

 

[ByronBlack]

Mike, here's a very quick sketch of the rough idea:

The legs will much thinner and longer than in the photo, they'll be about 35mm at the top tapering to about 20mm at the bottom.

 

[Slim]

I like the design Byron, and I think you have chosen some nice timbers.

I'm looking forward to some progress.

 

[DomValente]

Like that design BB.

I think, bit early for this, the table top should be turned to be at right angles to the rails or you may have expansion problems, I think :?

Dom

 

[lurker]

Byron,

You are getting very good......................












at drive bys :lol: :lol:

 

[ByronBlack]

Dom - You can't see from the picture there, but the Iroko top will be inset into a mitred sycamore frame, BUT it will be 'floating' with a 5mm gap all round to allow for the expansion: I think that should be sufficient? Please correct me if I havn't thought this one out correctly though.

Lurker - what drivebuys? El-rusto? or may fancy schmancy ruler?

 

[DomValente]

Sounds good to me BB

Dom

 

[OPJ]

I'm looking forward to this one! Is that the Lyndhurst/Axminster-clone I can see in the background? I got mine in to the £30 mobile base using the two-lengths-of-timber method under the fully raised and locked thicknessing bed method, just in case you'd like to know.

Incidentally, my mum's mentioned to me that she wants a new coffee table made from Ash, to match the TV stand I made last year. I'd like to incorporate some darker timber in there somewhere though (even if she thinks our current catalogue-jobbie is "too dark") and I like how you've used eBay to source a relatively small amount of timber which may be hard to obtain in some areas. I might have to pinch that idea myself...! :wink: Did you have to pay much for delivery on top?

 

[ByronBlack]

Is that the Lyndhurst/Axminster-clone I can see in the background?

Aye, it is indeed

Did you have to pay much for delivery on top?

The delivery for the sycamore and the Iroko was about £10, so all in all the wood for this project was just shy of £40 but there'll be almost as much left over, so its cost about £20 for this project.

 

[ByronBlack]

Update

Some good progress today. It's a joy to get back to hand-tool methods. I've glued up the staves to make up the top insert and also the leg blanks. The top insert has been thicknessed and is ready for smoothing.

Later this evening, I rough cut all the sycamore components; rip cut on the bandsaw and cross cut with a handsaw. The components were; thin cross rails, wider cross rails which will be curved, supports for the top, and finally the outer mitred rails which completes the top.

Tomorrow should see the planing to final thickness of the legs via the thicknesser (my hand planes create too much tear out on the Iroko). I will however be hand planing the sycamore parts to final dimension as I feel these are too small to go through the machine, and besides it's satisfying doing these by hand.

Pictures:

Two parts of the top-insert (Done in two parts to fit in the thicknesser)

Last two legs and the top-insert during glue up.

All components at rough dimensions ready for planing to final size tomorrow:

Questions:

I need to make a 20mm wide by 5mm deep rebate on the mitre top components. I have a largish shoulder plane - is it a good idea to use this against a fence to plane the rebate, or would I better off waiting to get a combo plane? Will the shoulder plane do the job accurately enough against a fence (I need to work out how to hold the stock also).

I intend to pin the through tenons of the rails with 3mm dowel - is that too small? the tenon will be 6mm wide by 12mm long so the 3mm bit will be going through the centre of the 12mm dimension.

Thanks for looking.

 

[ByronBlack]

Update

Had a really productive day, completed another 4 items on the 'to-do' list. Today was all about taking the rough sawn components and getting them to final dimension, this task was completed with hand planes and was a joy to do, the new bench makes this job so much easier than it was before, so a couple of hours later I completed all the dimensioning.

The next task for today was to mark and cut the tapers in the legs, this was done by feeding the stock through the bandsaw by eye and then tidying up with the jointer, they'll eventually be scraped to a final finish.

Planing the small cross rails to size (20mm square)

Shooting the ends of the legs square

Tapers being marked (you can see the cutting list under the leg)

Manual cutting of the tapers - didn't have the inclination to make a jig.

Planing the rough finish left by the bandsaw

Tapers finished

Tomorrow will see the marking and cutting of the mortices and the tenons and glue-up of the two leg assemblies.

Question

So far I have the tapers on both side of the legs, should I extend this further by tapering the front and the back? I thought I might do this and with a small hollow plane round of the edges, or do table legs generally look better with just tapers on the side?

Also, i'm considering using a bridle joint for the sycamore outer-top instead of mitres (not confident of doing a good job on these) what are your thoughts and opinions?

 

[Lord Nibbo]

It's looking good BB :lol: Tip.... Planing those legs smooth on the jointer, turn the leg around with the thick end nearest the rotor, then as you pass the wood over the cutter it wont be cutting into the grain but across it.

I dont like legs tapered on the outsides it makes it all look top heavy IMHO, just leave it with the taper on the insides (the face with the tennons) :lol:

 

[ByronBlack]

Thanks for the tip LN - i'll try that next time! As for the tapers, you might not like mine then because the taper is both sides of the leg inside and outside so it goes from 35mm thick at the top to 25mm at the bottom.

What I was enquiring about was whether or not to put a taper on the front and the back of the leg also or just leave the taper on the sides (as looking at the table front on).

 

[Lord Nibbo]

Thanks for the tip LN - i'll try that next time! As for the tapers, you might not like mine then because the taper is both sides of the leg inside and outside so it goes from 35mm thick at the top to 25mm at the bottom.

What I was enquiring about was whether or not to put a taper on the front and the back of the leg also or just leave the taper on the sides (as looking at the table front on).

It's not case of what I like BB it's what you like :lol: My swmbo likes straight chunky legs, I like tapers only on the insides (same side as the mortices) I would suggest that maybe you could taper three sides, both left and right as you have done and maybe the back. Try it on a bit of scrap and see what you think.

 

[ByronBlack]

three sides sounds like a good suggestion... you're right, I shall try this on scrap. Thanks LN

 

[engineer one]

looks interesting bb, will be interested in your experience gluing up the lengthways legs.

having done the end panels at last :roll:

now it is fettling the long bits :? not easy on your own.

good luck

paul :wink:

 

[ByronBlack]

Update

Another quiet and enjoyable day in the workshop today, got a few more hours in and was mostly all hand work. Todays task was to mark up the mortices and get the blighters chopped - these are through mortices.

Onto the pics:

Marking all done:

Using a stop block, I put a single drill hole in the smaller mortices, and about three in the longer mortices, this is a 10mm bit, but hte mortices will be widened to 12mm.

Using a kirschen butt chisel, I knock out the corner:

The smaller mortices complete. These are for thin cross rails:

The longer mortices for the slighter wider rails are also now complete, I just need to square up the final mortices for the side rails and I can get on with fitting the tenons:

So there we are. Again, it's such a pleasure using a sturdy bench to do slow methodical hand work, very satisfying. However, I really need to do more practicing on through mortices, I find it very hard to keep within the marking and knife lines, I always seem to do want to do a final pare to clean it up and invariably it ends up wider or longer than it should be, but at least they are semi-neat and i've tried where I can to make the visible parts for the exposed joints as clean as I can, there is some variation between the mortices, so it means a little more fiddling with tenons to get them to fit accurately, but thats not such a bad thing as it'll mean I will have to slow down and concentrate on each one rather than making any mistakes by making them all the same size and realizing I wasn't very accurate.

 

[MooreToolsPlease]

In some ways it might be a good thing that each tenon will need to be fitted to its mortice, you can never practice too much!
for the smaller mortices, would a smaller drill used a number of times have been easier to stay within the knife lines?

 

[ByronBlack]

HI matt, for the smaller mortices - you may have a point here, I used a 10mm thinking I would have 1mm each side to pare back but i think in retrospect you're correct maybe an 8mm would have been better.