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Another Coffee Table: Introduction




I have begun the build, but this is just prep at this stage. 

This is the design chosen by my nephew ..



There shall be a few interesting challenges along the way since I am using solid wood all the way.

The joinery will be rounded corners shaped from through dovetails, mitred at each side. The challenge is to have accurately cut and fitted dovetails in hard Jarrah (no compression) as the outside will be removed in the rounding process. 


The other challenge is the splayed and angled legs which, for added strength, will be fitted to a traditional rail design, that is, the legs and stretchers will be mortice-and-tenon joinery. The legs will splay from the corners.

Lastly, the drawer will extend the full width, and be opened from either end. No handles?

Beginning the prep by resawing some really nice Fiddleback Jarrah, which will be the top and sides. The length of the coffee table is to be 1000mm ...



I was watching the boards come out of the blade, keeping an eye on the kerf for movement. This even kerf told me that the boards were going to be well-mannered and stable ...



Here's an example of the figure. These boards will be bookmatched to create a width of 500mm ...



The lower side of the coffee table will be made of more "common" narrower Jarrah boards (still extremely nice!). I picked up a length 4m long, and then joined three together to get the width ...





The boards were stickered for a week ..



Some may have liked to have accentuated the centre figure this way when book-matching ...



Too busy for my liking.

I preferred this ...



And this is where I left the boards at the end of last weekend ...




Regards from Perth

Derek




November 2018