The Woodshop Shed

Small Mid-Century Coffee Table

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


My son lives in Montreal and asked me to build him a coffee table for his small apartment. It could only be 30×16 or so. I also had to ship it to him, so that meant removeable, metal legs. Because of these restrictions, my design was very simple. The wood is Sapele that I have left over from the king size bed I'm making. To keep it stable, I made it about 1 1/2” thick. I curved every edge to make the shape a bit more elegant and interesting and then tapered the bottom edges. Because of the curves, I couldn't use a table saw sled as I have on Shaker tapers. I used hand planes, and, I will admit, one of the few places my Makita power hand plane has come in really usefully. It was great!After shaping and smoothing, I used some Transtint dye, golden brown mixed with a bit of red mahogany to color. Sealed it with shellac, and then did final finish with Target waterborne lacquer.

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