Small Conoid Table

[Chestnut]

So thanks to @Coyote Jim for motivating me to build this table. I've always enjoyed Nakashima's work and it's about time that I made something strongly influenced by his style. There are going to be a couple of modifications which I'll cover in time.

Starting out this table base used a LOT of big timbers. Timbers i don't have and didn't really want pony up the cash to buy. Megan really likes the look of walnut, and i really enjoy the smell of walnut so walnut is the species of choice. The base beam designed is 3" thick and 4._1/4" tall so a 12-14/4 board would be required. I opted to take a wider 8/4 board split it in half and book match it. Conveniently i had just the board, it was around 9" wide. I sliced it in half on the table saw and glued it together book match style.

You can see below the grain match on the top of the beam. The ends look pretty good too and minimal to no saw wood will show as it's all buried inside the glue up.

Next step was to mill out all of the legs and cross beams. These are a bit smaller by design so I just used 8/4 walnut with 1 exception. The vertical Legs are around 3" thick and again I don't have any stock that thick. I threw out in another thread to laminate material and use a piece of cherry to separate the glue line. I used 6/4 walnut for the faces. I didn't have anything wide enough to do a book match but that'd only work on 1 side any way. So i went with a slip match taking both sides from 1 board and orienting them to make a pleasing looking edge.

Some of the walnut had some spa wood in it. This is ok with me but will take some consideration. I chose to orient the sap in a way that would would create some grain flow and also add visually to the piece. The deviation from the original design i mentioned should now be quite clear. The whole time i was working on this I was hoping that Mr. Nakashima wouldn't be turning over in his grave with disgust.

So @Coyote Jim is either a mad man or a champion and did his whole build with hand tools. That is VERY respectable, I however am not going to do that. I loaded up the dado stack in the table saw and grabbed the kerfmaker and got ready to do some joinery. First up was the bottom cross beam. In the larger table design there are 2 of these. Beings that my table is smaller I'm only doing 1. I do believe that Nakashima made a smaller version of the table with 1 cross as I got the idea this would work somewhere.

The kerfmaker makes this a VERY easy task. You calibrate the tool by magic to the thickens off your blade. Then you set the gap for how wide your part is. It provides you with 2 lengths that result in the perfect dado. Below the red block is a stop. I set my fence for the left side of the groove. The kerfmaker in grey sits against the stop and the fence against the kerfmaker. Once you make your first cut you release your fence flip the kerfmaker over and make the 2nd cut. In my instance I needed to nibble away the middle but it resulted in a perfect test fit.

The cross brace required a deep dado cut. I did this in 2 passes.

Perfect fit! (ignore that blue tape that is making the joint tight enough to not fall apart... ok so it wasn't a perfect fit i messed something up and will need to put a piece of veneer in there to tighten that joint up...)

Next is vertical legs. I wasn't confidant with the angle that I could nail the thickness of the legs. So i shot to make a dado/groove that was 1/128 tight and sand the legs to fit. These dados are on a 14 degree angle to the ground. So i took a solid hour to make sure everything was laid out properly and figured out how I'd make the cut. I ended up figuring out how I needed to move the fence to make the situation work. There was a BIG trick though.

With the miter gauge and needing to cut a groove on both sides I could only make 2 cuts with the fence on the right side of the blade. I'd either need to reference the bottom of the beam to make the remaining 2 cuts or I'd need to move the fence to the other side. Using the bottom side of the beam as reference is risky, are both top and bottom surfaces perfectly parallel? I'd also be referencing the opposite corner of the beam. Is the end cut perfectly parallel?

In the picture above you can see that I flip end for end to make the 2 cuts with the beam left of the blade. To get the remaining 2 cuts I moved the fence to the other side of the blade and referencing the top of the beam I made the remaining 2 cuts. This required the miter gauge to be changed to the opposite 14 degree mark. Luckily the incra gauge was perfectly capable of facilitating such an operation.

With both leg dados complete. I took the legs to the drum sander and made each one fit perfectly.

Next up is removing the material from the legs that will match the notches on the beams. These cuts will end up being 3.5" long and 2.5" wide so this is outside what a dado stack can accomplish. So I re-calibrated the kerfmaker to my band saw and got set up to complete the operation there.

I use a mag switch to reference the kerfmaker against the face of the fence it's equally as easy as the table saw. Using the resaw king blade the cut quality is more than enough for tenon or bridle joint faces.

So far this project is one of the more fun projects I've worked on. It's moving along very quickly and I'll likely have this table in service a week from today. If there are any procedures that you have questions on let me know. I'll also probably have a large dump of pictures and text later today as i've made significant progress from where this post ends already.

[Chestnut]

Picking up where I left off. There were a couple chisel operations that needed to happen. Firstly the angled grooves on the bottom beam needed to be chisled back to the line.

This was as simple as striking a line on the top and chopping down to remove the waste. I over excavated this material to make sure that there was no interference. Beings that it was end grain and I'm also not going to glue any of the joints except 1 it's not really a big deal.

With the angle of the groove and the top still being flat the mating portion of the bridle joint needed to be angled. When i cut the joint on the bottom of the leg I stopped just short. I figured out how much angle there would need to be accross the leg and measured down. Now i had a mark on both ends of the leg that corrosponded to the angle but how to conect those. Here is where i took my back saw and cut down to connect the lines.

This gave me a good base line for bulk removal but for fine removal i wanted soemthing that was a bit better. As a result I cut a scrap piece to the 14 degree angle and used it as a chisel guide for the fine removal.

This worked really well. It allowed me to nail a perfect angled bridle joint. From here on out i was having too much fun and forgot to take pictures but it was just more bridle joints in different orientations. The top beams were connected to the tops of the legs using the kerfmaster on the bandsaw.

After that was done I need to get the corresponding angle on the tops of the legs and the top cross beams. This was done by putting everything together and measuringw from my bench up 29 inches to set the top height. The top will be 1.25-1.5" thich so final height is 30.25-30.25.

One of the legs when trimmed turned out to have some drying stress and some checks showed up. I didn't see them either because of the end sealer or i just missed them for what ever reason. I "fixed" them by soaking some CA glue into the end grain and checks. Then sanded flush.

Some refinement was needed yet on the legs. I did a slight narrowing about 9" up from the bottom. It's hard to explain but pictures will have it make sense. It's subtle but nice. Cuts were made at the band saw. I needed a bit more light to see the pencil lines on the walnut so i brought out my portable light and tripod. This is a really useful shop tool, never thought it was going to be either.

Here is everything assembled and ready for finish.

First coat of finish went on and it's amazing how awesome and dark this walnut i got locally is. They don't steam their walnut at all so the sap would stands out more but as a result it retains a lot more of it's color depth. I've found my walnut supplier for good i believe now. In the picture below the vertical leg is from the walnut I bought from my new yard. The bottom beam is steamed walnut. I want to say the picture is exaggerating reality but it's not really.

Next up is the top. I haven't started it yet but will start it tonight and probably apply finish tomorrow.

[Coop]

Looks great Nut! And your pics and verbal description of your journal make it informative and a pleasure to follow! 

[wtnhighlander]

Looks great, Drew! Its almost hard to believe the uprights and lower beam are the same species, but I've had the same experience with air-dried vs. kiln+steamed walnut.

[Bmac]

Super job and looking great, I'm sure Nakashima is not rolling over in his grave, your doing him proud with this one.

Love my air dried walnut, so dark and rich, it's one wood that kiln drying and steaming can really mess up. Unfortunately those dark rich colors do mellow out some, but you still get a depth and look with air dried that is superior.

[Chestnut]

9 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

Looks great, Drew! Its almost hard to believe the uprights and lower beam are the same species, but I've had the same experience with air-dried vs. kiln+steamed walnut.

 

8 hours ago, Bmac said:

Super job and looking great, I'm sure Nakashima is not rolling over in his grave, your doing him proud with this one.

Love my air dried walnut, so dark and rich, it's one wood that kiln drying and steaming can really mess up. Unfortunately those dark rich colors do mellow out some, but you still get a depth and look with air dried that is superior.

It is kiln dried it's just not steamed during the kiln process which is more typical for walnut to darken the sap wood.

[difalkner]

That's really looking nice, Drew!  Can't wait to see the final piece.

David

[Bmac]

3 hours ago, Chestnut said:

 

It is kiln dried it's just not steamed during the kiln process which is more typical for walnut to darken the sap wood.

Yeah I understood that, I mentioned steaming but I guess it seemed like I was comparing kiln dried to air dried. But I do believe you get that little extra depth of color with air dried over kiln dried (without steaming), but not nearly as stark as the difference when you steam it.

Steaming walnut should be against the law, just leave the sapwood, it can be very attractive in walnut.

Looking forward to seeing this table with the top on it.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Bmac said:

Yeah I understood that, I mentioned steaming but I guess it seemed like I was comparing kiln dried to air dried. But I do believe you get that little extra depth of color with air dried over kiln dried (without steaming), but not nearly as stark as the difference when you steam it.

Steaming walnut should be against the law, just leave the sapwood, it can be very attractive in walnut.

Looking forward to seeing this table with the top on it.

I figured you and Ross both knew I was just adding for clarity for any other observer.

I agree steaming should be against the law. Light colored sapwood on walnut can be attractive when blended in properly. So the steaming not only ruins the color of the heart wood but it creates a muddy color in the sapwood that ruins that too. The yard i bought this lumber from agrees with us and therefore will be getting any future walnut business of mine. I can't get walnut trees to mill myself, anyone that has one wants you to pay their tree removal fee and then $10/BF on top of that to buy the log. It'd be easier and cheaper to buy land with walnuts on it, cut them down then sell the land after. Or the easiest, just buy from someone else that's already done the work.

[Chestnut]

The table is all complete! I figured I'd start out be showing the table that I'm replacing. It's just too big and it dominates the small eating area of out kitchen.

I made this table back in 2013 it was my 4th ever project. I made it in the back of a 1 stall garage with a miter saw, handheld circular saw, and brad nailer. Yes the car stayed in the garage while I was working. I didn't have another place to park it.

So out with the old in with the new.

The top turned out quite nice. The color in the walnut has a lot of depth to it that the camera kinda kills.

I'll be using the antique chairs i got from my Grandma for seating. The benches for the old table will probably get recycled. I'm not sure their fate yet. For now they work as plant stands.

[wtnhighlander]

That looks great, Drew! Works well with those multi-drawer units to either side of the glass.

Did you go with all satin on the finish, or put some gloss down as a base coat?

[Bmac]

Super job, Nakashima would be proud of that!

Not that the antique cars are bad, but I could think of a certain chair that would really look nice with that table.

[Coop]

Helluva job Nut! Really nice work.