Petite Cherry Table

This is another in my “catching up” series! This project is posted 7/18/2011. The work was done in October - November 2005
A very early piece that convinced me that I wanted to build furniture full time.

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Well, things don’t always turn out like you hope the will.
In this instance, I didn’t break out the camera until I’d gotten halfway into the project.

I had already built up the apron for the table and managed to get a pretty impressive book-matched pattern out of the grain. Unfortunately I can’t for the life of me remember how. I know that I hadn’t steam bent anything at the time. I also know that the only stock I had was 6/4 stock. And I was being very frugal with that. If you can figure out how I did it, please let me know. I’ve pondered it a couple of times since.

At any rate, by this point in the process, I had built up the apron. Shaped the parts into an oval and mitered the ends so they would fit together. After weighing a couple of different joinery options (splines, floating tenons, sliding joinery, etc) I finally decided that considering my skill level at the time and the fact that this joint would be sitting in the middle of a bridle joint (see a few steps below) that a couple of pegs would provide plenty of hold. The strength would come from the bridle joint, I just needed a way to register the parts vertically and horizontally. Two pegs seemed like just the trick. I already had my doweling jig from Lie-Nielsen and was ready to make some dowels anyway. Then it was: drill a couple of carefully placed holes and I’m ready to go.
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You may also note in the photo above, that I have already planed a flat area for the bridle joint.



Thank god for good old Emerson pattern maker’s vises. Here’s one of an infinite variety of ways it has saved me. The four bench dogs on it’s very wide faces pop up and when wrapped in leather scraps pushed in at exactly the right spots on the joints.
I’d like to say I planned it that way but I hate to lie.
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Because the dogs met right at the joints, I was able to exert a fair amount of pressure. In the planning stage, I was just figuring that I would use these dogs and they would apply pressure somewhere along the apron. If that had been somewhere in the middle of each section, I would have only been able to apply very tentative pressure and let the pegs and hide-glue do their work. Too much pressure would have caused deflections that would have opened the butt joints between each section and caused the piece to go out of oval.

Here I’m getting the bottom of the apron flat with a 4 1/2 Lie-Nielsen smoothing plane. Arguably not the perfect plane for the purpose but you know, you gotta do with what you have and at the time, that’s pretty much all I had.
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Once everything was flat and true, I would relieve a notch to help stabilize the bridle joint.
As you can see, this will not be the standard bridle joint. (There are no shoulders to provide lateral stabilization. I didn’t have the thickness in the wall to cut away a thinner area and still leave room for the pegs). Here I wanted the legs to hide the joining of one section of the apron to the other.
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Now I can fit the legs to the apron:
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[Notice on the right side of the photo: bench hook: indispensable item! Also, Hide-Glue pot: a simple $10.00 mini crock pot. Simmers food at 140 degrees F. Perfect!]

This had to be an air tight fit so lot’s of trial and error in the fitting process.
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After several fittings, all four legs are in place. Yea!
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It’s actually starting to look like a table!
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Typically, I will rough cut planks to approximate shape to make them easier to manage and then work out the fitting of the joinery. After the joinery is good, then I’ll go back and do the carving.



You can see that the leg on the left (not yet attached - photo below) has a simple notch cut out of it. That’s what slides over the seam between sections. The notch at the bottom of the apron (top in the shot below since the table is upside down) keeps the leg from wobbling side to side. You can see how much material I left on the inside portion of the leg. The notch cuts pretty deeply into the leg and I wanted to provide plenty of diagonal force support. This keeps the leg from moving in or out.

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[The length of that inside portion is quite specific. Any more would provide too much moment and would increase the chance of a split at the short grain right above the notch. Any less would provide less support for the portion of the leg to the inside of the notch which is drawing its’ strength from the continuity of the piece and through diagonal lateral support.]


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Now, the fun part!
Shaping the legs.
Sharpen up the blade in the small brass spoke shave by (wait for it) Lie-Nielsen.
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Again, the Emmert vise is the most valuable tool I have.


Here the leg is simply off of the band saw. I believe just cut by eye.
I think I had a template for the first cut out. But then I think I started “hogging to form” with the band saw.
You’ll notice it’s not only cut to shape out of 6/4 stock but I’ve also turned it on edge and relieved some material. The leg is thinner in the middle than it is at the foot and the knee.
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Now, as I start to shape the legs, i don’t want to loose sight of where the center of the outside of the leg is. So I draw a quick line down the center.
[I just hold the pencil between both thumbs and index fingers (that’s four points holding it!) and then the rest of your fingers sliding along the edges of the piece. If you do it this way, it’s actually pretty hard to draw a crooked line; or one that’s much off of center]
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I’m just bringing the front to a gently pointed round
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Mark the center of the back the same way as the front.
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Just keep doing the same operation on all four pieces. (ie: round the fronts on all four, then round the back corners on all four, then the little notch on the inside of all four, etc).
That way it’s easier to maintain consistency throughout the work.
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Good sized hand-clamps! What would we do without them?

The little piece in the middle was the inspiration for the carving at the top of each leg.
I had just bought my first set of carving chisels. A set of flex-cut palm chisels. I just wanted to see how they felt and how they cut. That piece (with the blue tape on it) was that first scrap I cut into.
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Then I put a few more forms on the sides of the legs as well as put a hollow running down the backs of the legs.
By now, I had purchased a few Pfeil “Swiss made” carving chisels.
I later bought a set from an antique store that are still among my favorites.
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Here is the finished carvings:
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And details on the feet:
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The book-matching of the apron:
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Another Detail of the feet:
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