My 1st Hall Table, designed made and finished

Imperial · 16 Jun 2007

I started with a doodle of a table and then found the wood, see picture below.

I biscuit jointed 3 planks together to make the top

I made a template and used a copy lathe to make 4 legs, tried to do it by hand but I hand no time to practice so I could make them all the same.

I made rails and cut them to the shape on a Bandsaw

It was all going so well I decided to add a hidden drawer, so made that all by hand

The top's original size was too large so trimmed it down

I finished it with a satin 2 pack

I have more pictures of the various stages but I thought that would be enough.

PowerTool · 16 Jun 2007

Nice piece of furniture

- looks very "light" with such delicate-looking legs.

Andrew

Waka · 16 Jun 2007

That looks a really fantastic table, I only have one comment to make and that relates to the legs. It might be the way you have taken the pic's, but to me they don't look in proportion to the top.

woodbloke · 16 Jun 2007

Good table here but I'm with Waka on this one......the legs are fine but the top needs to be drastically reduced in size to balance the whole design, and overhang of maybe 25mm all the way round would look good and to lighten the design still further I would suggest planing a broad chamfer on the underside (as in Shaker style table tops) if you decided to make the overhang any larger, say 60mm. Only my thoughts on an otherwise quite pleasing table - Rob

Imperial · 16 Jun 2007

Thanks for the comments, I had thought about drop leaf's but as I had already used biscuits and couldn't remember where they were, had to abandon that idea. I like the long overhang, which was the original idea but I do know that in the proportional element of the design the top looks good when the end of the curve is directly above the edge of the leg. It's made of London Plane which is something I forgot to mention.The stock was only available in 1" which is why the legs are made from 2 pieces. I also made it to show all types of hand and machine work, biscuits for rails to legs, spindle moulder for the top, veneering for the drawer bottom, hand cutting for the dovetail elements of the drawer and guide rails, turning legs, making a template for the legs. Overall for my 1st piece of design I'm very happy, but know I will improve.