Arts & Crafts End Table Design

It happens every time I design something and walk away for a few months.  When I finally look at the idea again, it's not quite good enough.  

Make a bunch of cubic rectangles and put them together, right?

This was my first "final" draft.

My original "final" design from several months ago.

It didn't take long for me to get sick of it.  It's too blocky, too thick.  It needs refining.

Spindles!  Just say no!

I spent another week on it and came up with a spindle version which became the next "final" draft.

Final Draft #2

I added a bevel to the underside of the top to lighten things up a bit, played around for awhile trying to find a spindle pattern that wasn't too plain, removed the double tenons and added a slotted dovetail drawer blade.   This remained for 3 or 4 months as the plan.

Fast-forward to today.  I opened the Sketchup model again and can't shake the feeling that I still hate how boxy and heavy it looks.  I also hate dusting between spindles and swore I'd never build spindle furniture.  I thought it needed something, but this isn't it.  It's too dark, too heavy, too boxy.

Fix it! But how?

One proven strategy for lightening the look of pieces like this is to taper the legs, but no.  I'll save that for the Shaker bedroom set I'm going to build for the boys.

Flare the legs out?  Definitely not.  For our taste, some of the Mackintosh pieces are too wide-bodied, and the Asian-inspired Arts & Crafts fusion isn't our bag.

The main reason we avoid these more vocal styles is that we're trying to find a universal aesthetic that fits with the rest of our home, even as styles change.  The end tables need to match the coffee table (already built) and everything needs to blend in with craftsman, rustic, lodge or whatever decor my wife decides to fill the room with.

A lot of Arts & Crafts furniture is big, boxy, heavy, bulky, strong, solid.  I think the real exercise here is to stay within the Arts & Crafts genre, but be as airy and lightweight as possible.  This is probably why we lean toward the Harvey Ellis style with his graceful and uplifting arcs.

I spent a good few hours today nudging things around.  I decreased the thickness of the top from 1" to 3/4" and that lightened it quite a bit.  I raised the skirt to add a bit more air underneath and deepened the arcs to increase the uplifting effect.  Instead of having a plank spanning the entire width of the table, I left room on each side to let even more air and light through.

At one point I had the plank through-mortised into the front and back skirts, but decided it added too much noise, drawing too much attention to itself.

Through-tenons on the plank.  I found it distracting.

We're trying to maintain a bird's eye view of the entire living room set across several years of separation (as I'm rather slow at building things).  Every stylistic decision here would have to carry through to the other pieces of my living room set.  So she also vetoed the Limbert-style gridwork plank approach I toyed around with at one point, too.

The latest "final" draft.

 Right now I feel pretty good about this.  I'll let it simmer for a week and come back to it with fresh eyes and see if it needs more tweaking.  Lots of Golden Ratio dimensioning again, because it's fun.  In the future I want to play around with Jim Tolpin's By Hand & Eye approach.

Flip Top Table is Complete!

Final Assembly.  Just need to position the top and screw on the cleats. 

Let's take her for a spin!

Leg / Apron Joinery Detail

Drink the Kool-Aid!  Clock your screws!

Barley says "Hi."

So that they'll know, 100 years from now, that two brothers were close. 

Flip Top Finishing!

Stickley Aurora Finishing Schedule:

1. Sand to 120 grit
2. Vacuum clean
3. Dampen all surfaces with hot water, let dry completely
4. Sand to 180 grit
5. Vacuum clean
6. Flood with TransFast Aniline Dye (Antique Cherry Brown, 1 oz by weight powder to 3 quarts water)
7. Wipe dry, let dry completely

Aniline Dye going on

Aniline dye dries pink and chalky.  Don't freak out! 

 8. Flood with boiled linseed oil, let sit for 5 minutes, wipe dry, let cure for a day or two

Boiled Linseed Oil adds depth and luster.

 9. Shellac to lock those two layers in and protect them from what's coming next.

Shellac as a barrier coat.

 10. Rub on General Finishes Antique Walnut Gel Stain, let haze, scrub off so there's no smears.  Let dry completely.

Gel stain going on.

Gel stain applied and dried.

11. Apply a moderate coat of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal Satin Oil & Polyurethane.  Apply with a cotton cloth with the grain.  Let dry completely.

12. Lightly scuff sand with 320 grit.

13. Poly coat #2.  Let dry completely.
14. Scuff sand 320 grit.
15. Poly coat #3.  Let dry completely.
16. Scuff sand 320 grit.
17. Light poly coat #4, make it perfect. Let dry completely.
18. Rub with grey nonwoven fiber pad to a dull, even sheen.
19. Apply paste wax, let haze, buff with clean cotton rag to a shine (pictured below).

Done!

Flip Top Hinge Mortises

Alright, it's not perfect, but it's as good as I can manage on this project.  I'll try harder next time.  And by trying harder, I mean to say, I'll try to be more patient and stop to resharpen more often and take lighter passes with the plane so I don't take off too much.  These table tops are NOT perfectly flat, but they're damn close.  Good enough for my brother, anyway.

Hinge mortises!  I think I truly enjoy hand mortising hinges.  There's something about it that it's just so satisfying.  One straight chisel, one small gouge (I sharpened my first gouge!  (using Mary May's instructions)), and a router plane.  10 minutes per mortise.  I listen to audio books while I work.  Dracula!

Mmmmm... nice.

We didn't care for the shiny yellow brass, so I bought Jax Brown Brass Darkener.  You soak the hinges in acetone for awhile, then scrub them with steel wool to remove the lacquer on them.  Then you can soak them in the Jax for a minute or two, then rinse with water, wipe lightly with steel wool until you like it, dry them off and spray lacquer to lock it in.  These came out fantastic.

Product Review: Starrett 819 Automatic Center Punch

This tool is awesome!

Perfectly centered screw locations.  Easiest time I've ever had with hinges.

Ready for screws.  Speaking of which.  Did you know that hardware stores only sell even numbered screws?  These hinges call for #7 wood screws.  I had to special order them!  WTF!  I skipped ahead and started finishing the table tops while waiting for the screws to arrive.

 Rule #493: DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, drill through the front of your tabletop when pre-drilling your hinge screw holes.  Avoid this catastrophe by any means necessary.  I saw some guy on YouTube make a little depth stop like this.  Drill a hole in a piece of scrap, cut around it on the band saw, and adjust the amount the drill bit projects from it to your desired depth.  Easy peasy.

Flip Top Breadboard Ends

Alright, so next up we need to square those table tops.  The circular saw was on a job site so we had to resort to the router and a straight edge.  Not my cup of tea so I asked Nathan to do it for me.  I hate routers.  One slip and *poof*, all those hours wasted.

Then we'll need some elongated mortises in the breadboard ends.  I bought the Lee Valley Premium Hollow Chisels and they work SO much better than the stock set that came with my Steel City Mortiser.  Holy crap they cut with so little resistance it's like a new machine.  We took turns drilling mortises because it was actually fun for once.  I thought this would take me 2 hours (usually does).  Took 30 minutes to drill 20 mortises.

I should have drilled the drawbore holes before drilling the mortises, but no big deal.

What's this?!  A MISTAKE?!  How dare you!?  

I was so certain that a 3/8" diameter peg would both look right and be the right choice for strength.  Nope.  It looked so out of proportion that I immediately regretted not testing out my theory on scrap first.  We cut a plug from red oak (all we had available) and glued it in.  Sawed it flush and drilled a 1/4" hole inside it.  No one will notice unless they look right at it.  And I think the aniline dye will even out the wood tones anyway.

Took both of us to cut the wide tongues on the tabletops using the dado stack on the table saw.  One person to press down to make sure the blade cuts to the full depth, and the other to push it through.

A nice tight fight.

A smattering of tools for this step in the process.  It's important to slow down here and take your time.  You really want this joint to fit snugly without any unsightly gaps.  I went too fast.  Now I have some unsightly gaps.  I won't show them to you though.  Not when I'm this sober.

Oh!  Also, another mistake.  :D   I should have left the breadboard ends 2 inches long on both sides so that I'd have something to hammer against to disassemble a tight fitting dryfit.  :P   I think I gave myself 3/4" on one side.  Not ideal.   Learn from my mistakes!

Alright, slow and steady here, measure multiple times and make sure you've got it laid out correctly.

 Looks good.

 All cut up and ready for glue.  Notice the elongated peg holes and that the glue is only on the center tenon.  That means I learned from and successfully avoided TWO previous mistakes.  :)

I spring jointed the breadboard ends so that they would provide extra pressure on their outer reaches, so one clamp in the center should have been enough to pull the joint tight, but I must not have been perfectly straight, so a second clamp helped.  With that one drawbore peg hammered in, I shouldn't need anymore clamps at all, but I kept using them as insurance.

36 drawbore pegs and not a single blow out.  Amen!  I did have a few pegs splinter apart while pounding them in, so I just pounded a peg from the other side to push it back out.  No big deal.  I spent a lot of time rounding the tips of the pegs and filing the entrances to each hole with my rattail rasp until just a sliver of oak was providing the mechanical leverage of the drawbore.

Cut 'em flush and smooth the breadboard ends to be flush with the rest of the top.

Of COURSE I'd cause more tear out.  Goddammit.  This was a really deep tear, too, so there's no way I could smooth it without making a huge divot.  So I decided to try wood filler and hope that it would blend in when I applied the finish.  (It did.)   Newly applied wood filler on the left... and me pointing at a sanded spot of wood filler to show that you can't really see it all that much.

Flip Top Table Top Progress

I had a moment of persnicketiness and decided to use tongue & grooves to help align the boards in the table tops.  In hindsight I should have just used biscuits.  It would have been faster and less error-prone.  The long-grain to long-grain glue joint is plenty strong by itself without a need for tongue & groove.  But whatever, it's done.  Lesson for next time.

Okay, so what you're about to see is me banging my head against the wall because it feels good when I stop.  I don't do a lot of flattening and smoothing of big panels like these.  I've read and read and read about it, but book learning isn't as useful as actual experience, so this series of photos chronicles my personal journey in problem solving this skill.

I start out simply enough: draw hash marks so I can know when I've planed down to an even depth, more or less.  Start planing across the grain as this is the path of least resistance and you can get most of the work done in this stage.  I (wrongly) chose a 27° blade, thinking angle didn't matter very much for this part.

ROUND ONE! Table Top #1, top side.

The result of that 27° blade choice is tons of really deep tear out.  I used a pencil to color the tear out spots so I'd know when I removed all of them.

I switched to a 37° blade, thinking a steeper angle would help.

I switched to my jointer plane, thinking it would help.

I finally gave up after 3 hours and called it a night.  The next evening I switched to the 52° blade, tightened the mouth, lightened the cut, and gave it another go.

Progress!  I have now learned to stop every 30 minutes to resharpen.  This makes a HUGE difference.  There were two spots with reversing grain direction.  I had to learn how to handle this the hard way.  In the future I may just avoid using boards that do this, opting instead for consistent grain direction for every board in a panel.

Close enough that I can switch to a card scraper and won't have too many noticeable divots.

Done!  5.5 hours and many drops of sweat.

ROUND TWO!  Table Top #1, underside.  

I'm sticking with the jointer plane and 52° blade, light cut, freshly sharpened, tight mouth.

DONE!  2.5 hours.  Still super sweaty and tired, but so happy to have minimal tear out to cleanup.

ROUND THREE! Table Top #2, top side.

I have learned the importance of raking light.  It really helps highlight the tear out and any ridges left by the plane.

Done!  90 minutes!  Getting faster!

 ROUND FOUR!  Table Top #2, underside.

Done!  75 minutes!  I don't think I can get much faster than this for a panel this size.

So to summarize the lessons learned:

1. Start with a freshly sharpened high blade angle.  Tighten the plane mouth.
2. Pencil hash marks across the panel.
3. Stage 1 (Coarse): Heavy cut across the grain, skewing in grain direction (this helps prevent some tear out in this stage).  Do this until all the pencil lines are gone.
4. Stage 2 (Medium): Improved flattening - Light cut at 45° to the grain direction.
5. Stage 3 (Fine): Lighter cut with the grain.  Focus here on removing tear out as much as possible.  Sharp is your best friend here.  Go slow and pay really close attention to any grain direction variances.  Go until you remove 99% of the tear out.
6. Stage 4: (Finer): Use a card scraper to remove any remaining shallow tear out.  Feather each area so there isn't a noticeable divot for you to feel or for light to bend into.
7. Stop to resharpen every 30 minutes
8. If the plane stops cutting, don't increase the depth of cut. Stop and go resharpen. Increasing the depth of cut will just result in a dull blade taking a deeper cut and creating more tear out.
9. Stay hydrated.