Some months long ago I finally dismantled an old futon frame I had at home, for which I had not had a mattress for perhaps a year. This left me with a pile of lumber, likely pine or Douglas Fir, which was a step above construction grade, if not absolutely furniture grade, and it seemed a waste to throw this wood away. So, I'm building an end table out of it, plus a few pieces of furniture grade Philippine Mahogany I found at a M.L. Condon's White Plains location. Last month I borrowed a biscuit joiner from a friend and glued up the top - two wedge-shaped pieces of fir (former legs on the futon) with a wide strip of mahogany between them. Making use of a barter agreement (labor for access) at a local machine shop, I trimmed the lumber to size, and M.L. Condon was kind enough to run the table top through their thickness planer, since the top was a glue-up with no metal hardware. I sanded the top by hand, starting at 60 grit and working down to 220. Here you see the top, with the lumber for the legs and skirting cut to size:
For the table top, I made use of the wedge-shaped nature of the futon's legs to lay the mahogany at an angle, for aesthetic reasons. Once I had glued the table top together it occurred to me that not only might the fir and the mahogany expand and contract at different rates, but by laying the mahogany at an angle to the fir I had further complicated the variation of the wood movement. Hopefully, I'll be okay, but with the glue dry, there's no turning back.
Visible but not obvious in this image are the grooves cut into the skirting and legs. These are for the biscuit joints that will connect the mahogany legs to the fir skirting. Not visible are an additional series of grooves along the top of the skirting - these will accept the hardware which will connect the table top to the table base. I'll add a photo of the grooves and the hardware once I complete the final assembly.
Last week, I returned to the machine shop to put a taper on the table legs, for a more finished look. My rough-and-tumble jig, made of a scrap of 1 x 4 salvaged from the futon, a 3" length of scrap 2 x 2 stud, and a drywall screw, did a surprisingly good job - I'll have to shoot a photo of it. The original jig was designed with a casement stay, hinge, and 2 knobs - all brass hardware with kiln dried fir, but I ran out of time and it never got built.
This morning I finished sanding down the tapers on the legs, at 220 grit, and finally began to assemble the base:
Here you can see two of the legs and the skirting between them, clamped in place as they dry by a 3' bar clamp I purchased for the purpose. (The wood beneath the protective plastic sheeting is an unrelated piece of birch ply.). I use a single #20 biscuit for each joint, and of course wood glue, taping the ends of the skirting against drips. I had wanted to tape the legs as well, but couldn't figure out how to line up the tape properly; in the end I used a lot of damp paper towels to clean up the excess glue (I'm a glue hound, and always seem to have excess glue squeezing from my work).
Next post: completing the frame, and the taper jig.
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