Hall Table Project Pics (long)
GolfSteve in Calgary
>Here�s a few pictures of a hall table that I recently finished. The table started out as a project for one of Rob Cosman�s hand tool courses (http://www.robcosman.com). About eight of us took the course in Calgary and attempted to build this table, completely with hand tools, in 5 long (> 12 hour) days of instruction. After five days of handsawing, dimensioning wood, and chopping mortises, most of the students had completed the basic carcasse, but only a couple had finished the glue up. Here�s a picture of the course in progress:
Next are some pictures of the completed product. I estimate it took me about 120 hours to complete � Rob says that he can finish this table in about 40 hours. The resident instructor of the facility says that his students can make a table similar to this, using power tools, in about 20 hours. The carcasse and tabletop are cherry, and the drawer fronts are maple. The finish is one coat of Lee Valley�s polymerized Tung oil, followed by French polished orange shellac. The orange shellac really brings a nice colour and hue to the cherry, but may have muddied up the figure in the maple drawer fronts a bit.
The tabletop is a single 15� wide piece of cherry, with only a small bit of sapwood on one corner. It started out as the best board of cherry that I�ve ever seen � strong 5/4 thick, straight, 16� wide, and 8� long. It was ordered from A&M Wood Specialty in Canada http://www.forloversofwood.com they did a great job picking out boards for the tabletops. The remainder of the wood came from local suppliers.
There are two drawers, one at each end. The drawers are hand-dovetailed and are piston-fit into the table. You can feel the air being pulled into and pushed out of the drawer as the drawer is opened and closed. The drawers have 7/8� thick fronts, �� thick mahogany sides, and �� thick pine bottoms. The low contrast between the mahogany and maple is a bit disappointing because the dovetails do not show very prominently. The drawer sides are finished with wax.
I also used mahogany drawer slips to hold the drawer bottom in place � I think this really spruces up the look of the drawer.
The construction method is pretty simple � four legs, two aprons, and two web-frames. The web-frames are connected to the aprons using splines. The groove for the splines was cut using a grooving plane made by Rob. The cross member in the centre of the web-frame was a later addition, half-lapped into place because I like to build things extra strong. This also allowed installation of dust panels into the lower web-frame.
The web-frame construction made it easy to install drawer stops that prevent the drawer from being accidentally pulled out of the carcasse. Small flip-up stops are screwed to the frame.
I signed the table under one of the drawer rails. I like to carve my name and the year using a micro-carving gouge. Some day I should get in the habit of doing this earlier in the construction, rather than as a last step, because a slip of the gouge would ruin the job.
The table was given to my Grandmother as a Christmas present. I thoroughly enjoyed building it, enjoyed the course, and learned a lot.
Thanks for looking.
