Top done, base milled up

With the top finished and stowed safely under a mattress in the spare bedroom I am on to the base. It is not going to be your usual four legs and an apron, however it will in fact include those elements. Here is a photo of the parts + spares, rough milled, settling and awaiting further instruction.


This is the waste, which was not much really...



This is the mockup with some joinery brainstorming drawn in.



You can see that the top will actually rest on stretchers that span across the long aprons. I'm going to go back to live tenons into the legs from the aprons but the stretcher/apron joints will b a series of four horizontal floating tenons. More about all of this later.

Chairs are done and the table is coming along

I never imagined that this dining set would the whole of my woodworking life for 2011 but that is indeed what it represents. Working full-time does not leave a lot of shop time but I have salvaged what I could. That being said, I'm happy with the results and have enjoyed my time, however infrequent it may be.

Photo 1: six chairs ready for delivery
Photo 2: table to is currently being finished.

The table top is solid walnut, and to say that it was a challenge graphically would be an understatement. I fought with myself for a month about matches and color and actually glued, then cut apart many joints that didn't fit my eye as it obviously had when I decided to glue it up. Anyways, in the end it shows intent and I feel like I got the most that I possibly could out of the wood.

Photo 3: The underside of the top. The top is roughly 41"x73" and 1 1/8" thick. To lighten up the edge it is beveled to about 3/4" at the edge. Similar to the arms of the chairs, the corner also offers a little tactile interest hidden underneath.

Like I said, short and sweet. See ya!

Blogger App

I'm hoping that I might be more inclined to find time to carry on blogging if I can do it from my phone. No more Downloading photos and then having to sit at the computer... I'm going to try the on the fly approach. If something interesting is happening, BAM!, time to post about it. Short and sweet but hopefully frequent.

Hope everyone out there in the woodworking world are doing well and making nice things.

I'm going to post again here ASAP about where my project sits..