Art Deco meets Southwest Console Table

Hard Maple for back panel and top/bottom edging and for the contrast with the darker woods. Tropical Walnut for the main carcass and legs. Padauk for the orange colored wood inlays and edge banding. Wenge for the back panel edge band and two of the lower upright “rays”. Zebra wood for the other upright “rays”. Leopard wood for the center rays and semi-circle. Morada for the larger triangles in the upper portion of the back panel. Finally. Gaboon Ebony for the arrowheads and dark black inlay on the base. Used dark color Titebond II glue for the darker woods and the standard color Titebond glue for the maple. Also some CA glue w Accelerator and wood dust to help fill/repair any holes or gaps.

Shaper Origin, table designed originally in SketchUp, Sawstop cabinet saw, Rikon 14” bandsaw, Makita biscuit cutter, Festool sander and dust extractor, and lots of clamps! Also helped to clean up hard angles in the wood with some sharp chisels and Exacto knives.

I haven’t developed a full set of instructions for this project as this was mainly a prototype and a way to help me explore the capabilities of Shaper and develop my own skill with the tool. I did use a lot of the on-tool CAD capabilities especially for the inlay triangles and simpler shapes. If I get the time in the future I will update to include the cut files I used. Basically I built up the table in a few phases. The back panel and inlay was it’s own build, carved out of a single slab of hard maple the size I needed. Using the shaper tool I overlaid the outline of the inlays and then used the tool to cut the inlay pockets to 1/8” deep (I wanted the inlay to be fairly substantial, not a typical veneer). Then I proceeded to cut all of the inlay wood species from cut files I created on my desktop and saved to my shaperhub account. Then it was a matter of assembly and glue up. Once all the inlays were installed and cured, it was sanded smooth for an initial sanding. I cut the outline of the back panel on my table saw and band saw, then did a final sanding. The table top and bottom panels and legs were all cut from Tropical Walnut and I also cut all of the edge banding for the top panel at the same time from hard maple and Padauk. Since most of my Tropical walnut stock was a bit narrow, I had to laminate boards together using my biscuit cutter and glue to get the desired sizes, including the legs. All of the inlay work on the bottom piece was done from the on-tool CAD program. Worked like a charm. For the mortise and tenons for the legs, I had to figure out the compound angles needed that would allow me to properly orient and clamp the legs to my Shaper workstation. I did do a couple of test pieces to make sure it was as exact as possible. For the mortise in the top and bottom panels, I measured the exact layout of the tenons at each end of each leg for every corner and then using the on-tool CAD program and a workspace for each piece, I cut the mortises for all the corners top and bottom. Once the legs were done, I assembled the top and bottom pieces, and then sanded all the individual parts before final assembly. I doweled the back panel piece to the top and bottom using a couple of dowels on each end. I used a sanding sealer for all if it, and did multiple sandings eventually ending up at a 600 grit sanding for the final pass before adding the top coats of which there were three. I used a matte finish oil based polyurethane for that. All told, it took me about 4 weeks part time to produce the piece. I expect if I do another I should be able to cut that in half.