Mid-century table

By AndrewWR
|
BY-NC-SA 4.0 License
|
Updated Wed Jul 31 2024

Inspired by two tables I grew up with, mainly the one I learned to colour inside the lines on, but with a nod to my mother's much loved G-plan glass top.

1 hr 30 min
Intermediate

8

Furniture

Files Included (6)

  • Coffee table leg assembly.svg

    3 kB
  • Coffee table leg lap joint.svg

    2 kB
  • coffee table leg mortices.svg

    2 kB
  • Coffee table leg stretcher 2.svg

    2 kB
  • Coffee table legs.svg

    2 kB
  • coffee table top.svg

    2 kB

Materials

Pau Rosa slab (was waney edged, 145cm x 55cm x 4cm)

Ash PAR (120mm x 32mm x 3.2M)

8 dominoes (25mm x 10mm x 50mm)

4 figure eight tabletop mounting clips

Tools

Track saw

Shaper Origin

Router and sled for planing slab

Instructions

All the leg components can be cut with Shaper Origin because 32mm is well within it's cutting depth range. I actually cut 10mm deep in two passes then trimmed the pieces on a band saw and router table with flush trim bit, but thsoe are optional tool and you can just use SO. The joinsts were cut with SO too, though if you have a domino joiner, you're going to prefer that. I saved a couple of the triangular offcuts to CA glue on as clamping cawls. They helped. The lap joint at the crux of the two leg assemblies was cut on Workstation with a little care because rthe curved side of the leg assembly wasn't conducive to aligning the workpiece. Tricky but not impossible, and why I rate this project intermediate instead of easy. The Pau rosa slab was supplied planed but cupped while acclimatizing for a month. I built a router sled to flatten it and thin it down from 40mm to 34mm, closer to the stock thicknes of the legs. Vevor railes and linear bearing blocks were cheap and very easy to turn into a router sled. Shaper Origin made me a plate to clamp my big router to and I was good to go for under £100, and that's for a 150cm x 80mm router sled. The flattening bit was an extra £20. Not a bad investment. The table top was entirely Shaper cut because this slab was not going to balance on the small bandsaw I have. The design included sharp corners but I rounder them off while belt sanding the edges because people walk into coffee tables. All the edges were rounded over with an asymmetrical roundover bit i was trying out and quite like. The finish is Fiddes satin hard wax oil. I reckon that reflection image isn't too shabby for a satin finished surface. Leg attachment hardware was figure eight clips that Ammazon in the USA actually provided with free shipping to the UK. The ash got blacked with India ink which beats the bejeezus out of any proper black woodstain I've tried.


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