Fox's Modern Table

[lewisc]

Your patience has paid off. Well done!

[Denette]

On 6/29/2017 at 0:36 PM, SawDustB said:

Awesome job. I'm especially impressed at the number of firsts you have in this project... and that there's no corresponding list of mistakes. And with a new baby no less!

That's the trick, isn't it?  But the truth is, I have a list of firsts, a list of ways I screwed up those firsts, and a list of ways I learned to fix my mistakes.

 

Half-blind dovetail (front of drawers): I had two problems with this part.  First, I made thin pins on the top and bottom, and one cracked a little when I fit the two pieces together.  I had to flood the crack with glue and clamp it, and that fixed it pretty well.  Second, I failed to take into account the difference in thickness created by making a rabbet on the tails on the side (you know what I'm talking about, the rabbet you make in order to easily transfer the tails to the side), and this meant that there was a thin, consistent gap on the end of the tails.  I cut end-grain wedges from the offcuts of the drawer front and drove them into place in the gaps, and it hid things reasonably well.  A woodworker might notice it if he looked closely enough, but most people wouldn't.  

Through dovetail (back of drawers): Rule number one of working with chisels is now going to be "never attempt to chisel end grain on an open pore wood."  The ash I used for the drawers was so crumbly that it looked like I was just ripping the wood out rather than cutting it.  I got clean edges on the outside, but the end grain I chiseled all looked like garbage.  But that's a problem that is inherently hidden, so there's your fix there.  Again, here, I didn't take into account the width of the rabbet on the tails, and this led to pins that protruded.  I actually liked this look, so I pillowed the edges and left them.  The pins keep the drawers tight when the come in and out, so I didn't want to make them flush or I'd get a lot of slop.

Solid wood drawer bottom: I made my drawer bottoms too thick and/or my groove too low.  Next time, make sure to route the drawer bottom groove maybe 1/16" higher.  To avoid replaning the drawer bottoms (and risking snipe), I had to route a 1/16" rabbet in the top side of the drawer bottoms so they would not scrape on the underside.  Whoops.  That said, the pillowed edges of the drawer interiors look pretty neat, even if they will be prone to dust and whatever else wants to settle there.  Happy accidents.

Friction-fit drawers:  The bottom drawer went together and somehow ended up with the left side about 1/32" more proud than the right side.  I decided that I could fix this one of two ways - either by planing the front left side down ever so slightly to make the drawer appear square when closed, or by planing the sides and back to make the drawer actually settle in and truly be square.  I decided to go with the first option because I could use the drawer opening as a marking gauge for a scribing knife.  I got the right side perfectly parallel with the front face, then scribed around the left side to leave a guide mark for planing.  Another problem was getting the drawer movement smooth and easy.  I made the drawers super tight to start with, and had to gently remove material to allow for more air flow just a little at a time to make drawers that still feel airtight but aren't a pain to open and close. My benchmark was making the drawers just barely loose enough that the table doesn't move if you pull them fast, and I think I did a pretty good job of that.

Hot BLO finish: As firsts go, this one was a huge success.  Aside from being way too time and labor intensive for most projects, I'm thrilled with how the project looks.  It really brought out the figure in the grain, and imparted a rich glow to the cherry that wipe-on poly alone wouldn't have.

Modern furniture: Working with clean lines is hard.  Every little ding or bump on this project turned into a real problem.  On other projects I would have just put a chamfer or roundover on the edges, but keeping clean lines is difficult when you're thumping around in the shop.  The fix here was simple: be a lot more careful in the shop.

Solid cherry furniture: Because I planned ahead there hopefully won't be problems, per se, but designing to allow wood movement in the midst of all the complex joinery was quite a task.  The back panel in particular was difficult.  Even if I messed something up, though, I do get to have the assurance that working in the hot, humid Arkansas summer in an open garage means that nothing is going to get any tighter than it is; I'm not going to go to open a drawer one day and find that it's swollen shut.

Figured wood: Oh my goodness, the random grain pattern on the top nearly made me give up on the blind mitered dovetail. I nearly ruined the hand-chiseled miter on the corner because the grain kept catching.  The interior faces of some of the figured cherry dovetail joints just look chewed up.  The joint will hold, but holy smokes - lesson learned: take tiny, tiny passes on figured wood. 

Blind mitered dovetail joint: This was probably the most complex part of the project.  It was a huge milestone for me, because it was the most complicated joint in The Joint Book, which is the book my dad gave me when I first started woodworking.  I've always wanted to do it.  Now I feel like I can do anything if I can do that thing.  Problems I faced in making this joint (not including my newness to hand tooled dovetails in general) included trying to make a jig that would allow me to chisel the miter, spacing out the dovetails properly, and getting it to clamp together at the corners.  Evidently my jig had some degree of curve to it, but it wasn't enough to ruin anything.

Solid wood back panel: I knew it was going to happen to some degree just because of the thinness of the panel, and I was right - it bowed a little bit along one of the glue joints.  It wasn't enough to ruin anything, but with a ½" thin panel on a project dragged out over two months it's bound to happen.  Fortunately it went into place well enough and didn't cause further problems.  There is a small visible gap on the end of the panel, at the edge of the open shelves.  This seems to have been inevitable, considering that I was leaving space for wood movement, but I wish I could have done something different to fix it.

Crisscross legs: The joint in the center was, in the original plan, going to be super tight and get glued up.  And, right off the table saw, it certainly was.  What I failed to take into consideration was the way the wood would move after I cut the joinery, because it opened up and loosened itself on both boards by bending away from the cut.  This caused the joint to be loose, which forced me to get creative and led to the crazy scissor-action dovetail key base attachment system.

Angled legs: When I went to clamp them into place, I had no way of knowing that the tenon was fully seated into the bridle joint.  Therefore, when I cut the angle onto the legs, two of them had a little gap where the tenon hadn't made full contact.  I had to cut an end grain wedge from the offcut and tap it in to hide the gap.

Sliding dovetail key base attachment: I wish I had planned in advance for this one.  While it's not a problem, it's definitely the weakest area of my design.  The legs are a little prone to deflecting if you try to scoot the table about.  If I had my druthers I'd have made the cross braces half an inch thicker so the dovetails would have had more contact area, and I'd also have made the dovetails go clean through the leg tops, in one side and out the other.  Still though, as far as things I feel clever for, this one takes the cake.

Hand-planed chamfered edge : It came out wobbly because the board was not totally flat.  Had to fake a straight edge with sandpaper and soften it up - it looks less sharp than it would if it had been done right the first time, but still better than a big wonky wobbly line.

Leather foot pads: No problems here.  I did foresee the issue of trying to figure out which adhesive would work best and decided to give everything a shot in a test.  I glued four test strips to a board, and left about 1 inch of leather hanging off the edge to use as a pull tab to see which was toughest to rip off.  Each strip got a different glue - Titebond II, Devcon Epoxy, Loctite CA glue, and an odd rubber cement-esque industrial adhesive that I had around for some reason and figured I'd just test for the heck of it.  For the record, CA glue wins hands down because it penetrated into the leather and the wood.  The rubber cement was a joke and pulled off with almost no effort.  Titebond and Epoxy both worked reasonably well, but still didn't do as great a job as CA glue; still, they didn't come off, exactly, because when I tried to remove them it was the leather that ripped in half.

Long sliding dovetails in hardwood: I've done sliding dovetails in softwoods before, but softwoods are more forgiving in things that need to be super tight because they have more give.  The only visible defect on the front (that I'm aware of) is right here: 

That is where my homemade router table bit me in the butt.  Things weren't perfect, and one side of the dovetail was routed lower than the other side.  It is a small defect, and the glue mostly filled it up, so I'm not that worried about it.  A much more substantial problem occurred while I was making the joint the first time.  There was an issue (again, homemade router table) with the height of the joint which caused the dovetail to not pull together tightly enough.  I decided to glue a super thin strip of wood into the socket (maybe 1/32" thick) and then soften up the tail as needed to sneak up on a perfect fit.  This resulted in a fit that was way too tight, but was better than what came before it.  After much refining, things finally got to where they are now and I called it good enough.  So I guess the lesson learned on fixing sliding dovetails is to have a router table that is more reliable.

Finishing with wipe-on poly and up to 2000 grit ROS sandpaper: I kept making pigtails in the surface, or having some dull areas and some shiny areas, and to be honest I'm still not 100 percent thrilled with the sheen of the top.  I finally settled on making the top uniform by wiping on a final layer of 75% mineral spirits and 25% wipe-on poly, then vigorously buffing with a dry cloth until it was all dry.  If nothing else, it's all the same flat sheen.  I still might revisit it and add another coat, though.  Some projects are never finished, and the lesson here was to just be able to call it good enough and step away!

 

All that to say, it wasn't an easy project.  Every success came with its own set of wrinkles and quirks.  But I can honestly say I'm very proud of how this project turned out.

[Chet]

Great job, that came out really nice.  You should be proud of that.

[gee-dub]

Great job on a cool looking piece with a mid-century modern flair.  You are right to be proud of a piece that will surely be handed down and enjoyed.