Guest Room Bedside Tables

[gee-dub]

After we had out-of-town guests a while back it became painfully obvious that we needed some sort of night stands in one of the guest rooms. With the holidays coming LOML moved this up on the list. She showed me a style that is not my usual thing. After some discussion we arrived at a design that she liked. I'll show that later. For now I will just go through the motions.

I wanted to use up some more of this sappy or odd-man-out material.

There will be square tapered legs. I'm sure many folks use this trick to select the orientation of the figure to get a good look on as many faces of the leg as possible.



Here's a random thing I do that may help someone or give them an even better idea. This is a magnet wrapped in some tape to get the amount of pull I am happy with.

I stick it to a 1-2-3 block.

I stick the block to the table saw top. I set the fence 3" more than the measurement I am after to make a quick, safe, length-stop.

The board laying there is just a support. It is made from a finish test-board for a jewelry cabinet I made LOML 18 years ago . It happened to be the same thickness as my sled bases so way back when I recessed a couple of magnets in it.

The magnets along with some brush-on rubber product make the board stay put. I generally only use it on longer stock but it was handy and seemed to help out. At any rate, the milled leg blanks are cut to length.

I pull the taper jig down off the wall and taper the two "inside" faces of the legs.



I also rough mill some blanks for the aprons and the tops.

I will sticker these for a couple of days while I fool around with the drawer parts.

[treeslayer]

Always in on your projects @gee-dub, looking forward to this one as well 

[wtnhighlander]

Handy tips, @gee-dub. Don't you normally cut any joinery on the legs before tapering or shaping them? Not doing that here makes me wonder what interesting design you came up with!

[gee-dub]

On 10/26/2023 at 3:49 AM, wtnhighlander said:

Handy tips, @gee-dub. Don't you normally cut any joinery on the legs before tapering or shaping them? Not doing that here makes me wonder what interesting design you came up with!

Normally yes.  I find it to be a good idea to mill joinery while the blank is big and square.  This is especially true for curved parts .  Since I have been spoiled with the Domino table I factor that into my process.  The upper 4" of these legs remain square and that is enough to register on the table for mortising.

[gee-dub]

Productive morning. I milled all the blanks to final size. Glued up the tops.

I stick a bit of tape where each glue joint will be. While doing this I ponder those posts about how to get glue off your clamps . . .
I dry clamp the parts together to mark out my Domino locations.

Cut 64 mortises using the aforementioned Domino table





I have a random tip thread somewhere on these. Just some magnets set into some plywood blocks.

They are great whenever you need to clamp to a cast iron top that has a web-style underside.



On smaller scale items we can have mortises connect.

My usual on this is to miter the ends of the tenons to get the maximum long grain glue surface I can.

It is no different with floating tenons. It took just a few minutes at the sander to miter these Dominoes.





And here's the dry fit parts.

Now I can take them back apart, clean things up and prep the surface (of these parts at least) for finish.

[pkinneb]

Great tip on the clamp blocks!!

[gee-dub]

I keep a few goats in the back of the property to keep the weeds down. I have to relocate their stakes every so often so that they clean the whole area. By keeping them staked at intervals they eat EVERYTHING down to the dirt. That chore along with some errands means that I don't have much to show for today. I beveled the underside of the tops.

It is funny how much I use this little fixed mouth apron plane for cleaning up edges.

I strike a line for the beginning of the tapers on the legs. I use this as a guide when I am using the taper jig at the tablesaw. I marked one with white pencil here to make it show.

The theory is that as I plane off the machine marks I stop at that strike line. This gives me a definite end-of-taper visually.

All eight legs are all cleaned up.

I use the same disc sander table I used on the Dominoes to bevel the bottom of the legs to create a sort of foot. Instead of 45 degrees these bevels are at 60 degrees. That just happens to be a couple of angles that I have marked out on the table and area easy to repeat.



The drawers will ride on runners of a sort. I hold the stock up to the dry fit piece, strike a line and cut them to length.



This will make a bit more sense as I install them. I am being called to dinner (and I'm never late for that) so these will have to set till tomorrow.

[Coop]

I see this and referred to the link of the original review of this product, (which somehow I missed), only 10 minutes after reading about it in the new FWW Tools & Shops. Maybe the Domino gods are telling me something?

[gee-dub]

On 10/28/2023 at 6:28 PM, Coop said:

Maybe the Domino gods are telling me something?

I started keeping wish lists at certain sites years ago; Lee Valley among them.  This makes it  easy for people to get me something, large or small, that I really want.  These are usually things that I may not be willing to spend the money on for myself.  I put the Domino table on there not really expecting to get it.  Now that I have it I can say that it is a real asset for a small one man shop.  It especially excels for a lot of repeated operations.

[Coop]

I like working with darker woods and will often hold a small flashlight in my mouth to see the line that I have drawn, even after highlighting it with a white pencil. I wish that Festool had put a small light directed over their line on the base plate. 

[Mark J]

Goats or no goats, that still seems like a lot accomplished for one day.

(You really have goats?  How does that even work?  Deserves a thread, with goat pictures).

[gee-dub]

On 10/29/2023 at 6:36 AM, Mark J said:

Deserves a thread, with goat pictures).

I don't know about a thread but, here's the deal.  Drive stake with 20' cable into the ground. Might be time for a new stake . . .

Attach goat.  This one used to have a name but now is just called "biter" for reasons I don't need to explain.  We have established a good relationship.  She avoids me and I don't bop her in the head.

Goat eats 40' diameter circle of scrub, bullheads and tumbleweeds . . . Move to next stake or tie point.  This one is called hook-neck.

She was born with a deformed neck and would have died.  My daughter took her in and nursed her. You can hardly tell about the neck now.  Presto; almost-free goat. I have four total on the property right now.  

Left unattended I get tumbleweeds bigger than washing machines.  The weeds are hard to keep up with and I have other things I want to do.  The ground is pretty irregular in the back and a ride-on mower is a pain back there.  The poop breaks down and goes into the soil.  Once they finish with the front area I will lend them to the neighbors on each side.  The goats eat, the weeds are gone, and you get free fertilizer.

[JohnG]

On 10/26/2023 at 12:28 AM, gee-dub said:

 

On 10/26/2023 at 12:28 AM, gee-dub said:

Just curious, what's your preferred method for getting the first reference face from the rough stock in the first pic to the 2nd pic? When you want a square leg stock that's not aligned with the rough stock board. Adjust fence angle of jointer? Tilt TS blade? Hand plane? Band saw? Something else?

Looks like these are coming along well! My wife read that goats can be trained to an invisible fence system, now we are considering getting some to eat down the poison ivy and other weeds in the woods...

[gee-dub]

On 10/29/2023 at 10:23 AM, JohnG said:

Just curious, what's your preferred method for getting the first reference face from the rough stock in the first pic to the 2nd pic?

I did these at the jointer.  I set the angle via one edge of the drawn square, joint close to that line, joint another face perpendicular to that surface, then use the planer to make the opposite sides parallel.  That is my go-to for blanks up to about 40".  Larger or longer blanks get the table tilted at the bandsaw.  Then I joint that bandsawn surface to create my reference face.  My jointer has long tables but setting an original angled reference on a long blank is just easier for me at the bandsaw.

Just a note to any new folks . . . if you only use your jointer for face and edge work you're not getting your money's worth .

[JohnG]

I don’t hear many people talk about tilting their jointer fence away from 90* for this type of task. Maybe they do and just don’t mention it often.

[Tpt life]

It is a technique in a lot of old books. New fences just started being subpar for those kind of back and forth adjustments. 

[gee-dub]

I changed my mind about the separate runners for the drawers. These things are quite small and I am switching to a modified version of something I saw Mike Korsak do on one of his small tables. The front drawer frame and the rear apron get a stopped groove.

The bottom pan gets a matching tongue.

The full length tongue gets turned into a narrower tongue at the band saw.

These parts assemble like so.

The pan is dry fit in both. The left table shows how I might place runners to control the drawer.

Side note: I got this glue bottle tip in a set I picked up somewhere along the way. Seeming how i got it before the Domino was in the U.S. I believe it is designed for biscuits

It does work great for Dominoes though.

All surfaces are prep'd for finish and the pre-finishing is done

I will probably glue up the bases tomorrow and start on the drawers.

[gee-dub]

I had pulled some tiger maple for the drawer front and trim but hadn't really decided.

I played with a few pull shapes and materials. I like the leopard wood.

The drawer will use a false front. I often find an edge profile I want for smaller items by using part of a larger profile. Using a portion of this large roundover . . .

I end up here.

I'm happy with the result so I will knock out the other one.

[Coop]

That glue tip looks like a neat idea but I bet it’s still made from the same plastic as the original? Rockler makes a glue brush with rubber tits that glue won’t stick to. I wish TiteBond would make their tips out of similar materials. Sometimes (often) I fail to clean the ends of my tips. I know, sounds like a personal problem! 
So the edges are not the result of using a chamfer bit. I like the results. 

[gee-dub]

I use a Forstner to create a recess for one side of the figure 8 connectors that will hold the tops on. I chisel the points off to allow the fasteners to move with the seasons.



Combining small, light drawers, and grandkids can result in drawers being pulled right out of the table. I use a simple, off-center, rotating piece to act as a drawer stop.



First coats of finish . . .

Here's a view of the drawer front profile.

I also cut a profile on each edge of a larger-than-required tiger maple blank.

Then I rip a strip of trim off each side.

Here's an odd little helper. It is sort of like a high density foam taco with hook and loop on it. It is sized to use 5" sanding discs.

Here I am using 1000 grit to prep the finish for the final coat.

Final coat for the bases.

The tops will get two more coats.

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

On 10/29/2023 at 12:30 PM, gee-dub said:

Just a note to any new folks . . . if you only use your jointer for face and edge work you're not getting your money's worth .

I've been selling these jigs on etsy. Tilting the jointer fence to 45° was the ticket for getting it just right. 

[Coop]

Is this jig used to set the fence to 45* or you cut it on the jointer and it’s used for something else entirely? 

[Mark J]

@Spalted Milkball, what Coop said.

[gee-dub]

I make drawer runners and stops a lot of different ways. This is generally driven by what the piece is and its scale. For these little guys I put a couple of dense felt dots on the back wall.

I put a couple of flat head screws in the back edges of the drawer box.

These are adjusted to stop the drawer about 1/16" from the face frame to avoid the smacking sound smaller drawers can make when closed.

Here's a good look at one of the pulls in situ.

Here's an overall showing the play between the curly maple false front and the trim from the same material.

The flash effects the colors in this pic but it does show how the drawer fronts are book matched.

Now where was I when these suddenly became a priority . . .

[Mark J]

They look great, gee-dub.