Maple & Cherry nook table

Commissioned nook table, based on a previously built one the buyer admired. 

Rough initial sketch to visualize concept.

 

Some of the old Cherry beams to be used for the post and beam frame

 

Marking out feet

Beautiful grain on the Cherry

Marking mortises and tenons

Adding keys to reinforce the split. Good insurance but probably not needed

Trimming tenons with Router plane after cutting. I use a scrap piece to guide the plane base.

Chopping mortises

Pieces roughed out, ready for final fitting after planing and sanding.

Fitting the through tenons in the next sequence of photographs.

I Finally found some wide Maple for the top, it's nice working with 10"plus wide boards. I think the end product looks that much better for it. 

The next few photographs show the boards selected, sawn, try-planed and finally glued.

Using my straight edge to test the edge joint surface

These boards glued up nicely. The streaks are from wiping the excess glue off the joints.

All the joints are now fitted so I dry assembled the table one last time. The top looks good but still needs to be cut down to length. Still a lot of small stuff to do.

Planing chamfers on leg pieces in the following pics

Mortises chiseled out and buttons fitted for top attachment

Legs glued up

Freshly sanded Cherry table leg sitting on my old cherry saw horse, which has two coats of linseed oil. It's amazing how dark it gets.

I flattened the upper side of the top with a jack plane, the under side with a Scrub plane. The undulations underneath give an interesting character to the piece, and help mark it as a hand-made one.

 

Trestle glued

Stain and first coats of finish applied

All done