News by... Paul Tout Furniture Designer-Maker

Table progress


Well, as with many quite experimental ideas I have they end up taking a whole lot longer than I thought!
Not that I mind, as this just allows for the moments when you stand back and look. Then decide that just removing a bit of material here or there would completely change the appearance for the better, not at that point realising the amount of work it will take to change. I guess that is part of the joy of designing and making for yourself, having that freedom. Probably not financially very clever but then that's never been the motivation for me.

I eventually managed to get the base joints tight all the way around using pieces of paper to adjust up and down on the shooting board to get the perfect angle. Then I came up with a way of clamping the whole piece using band clamps around screws. The screws are set at points which will later be removed during shaping.

I carried out some rough shaping and drilled the holes that the struts will be tenoned into. The rest of the shaping has to be done after the base is glued up and will have a smooth transition up into the struts and arched between each base piece.

Next it was time to glue up the base. Gluing up pieces is normally a pretty tense experience. I'm fairly organised and get everything in order before starting. Even so, I was still quite daunted by gluing up the 16 sided base. Using epoxy we would have to move quickly, so I recruited some help. I also drilled shallow holes into the end grain joint and the plywood tenons to give the glue somewhere to flow into.

The helper didn't fill me with confidence.

As you can see the glue up went well, although it got a bit messy. Still, I'd rather too much glue and more clean up than too little and a ruined piece. Next job is the shaping of the base and then gluing in the struts.