July 28th, 2007 |
This is the end, my only friend, the end...table.
OR IS IT MERELY A BOLD NEW BEGINNING?
I created a new top for an old small chairside table that we had. Here are some pictures, and here is the story.
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We had bought a small plant stand or drink stand a year or two ago. The metal is in good shape but the base material of the platform was just, well, crap. A compressed paper-cardboard thing, there was no way it was going to last. Typical cheap consumer good. So, the time came to replace it.
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See how the top filligree flaked away, the composite material had absorbed water, frayed and split, and the black metal stand was looking dingy? Yeah. Time for a WAREHOUSE project.
Thanks to the most excellent benevolence of one right honorable Rock, I have been provided with a small but steady and completely sufficient stream of extremely high quality hardwoods of a most varied nature. I had recently received a trunk full of slightly miss-milled Jarrah wood, a truly gorgeous Australian hardwood. I contrasted it with some earlier selections I'd received and got to work.
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I had a very rough plan in mind but most of it was going to be made up as I went. I don't have many power tools. The only ones I own are a cordless drill, a palm sander, and a dremel tool. I used them all on this project, but I also used the heck out of my Japanese pull saw. That Jarrah wood is hard.
Speaking of hard wood (yes) it takes absolutely forever to sand. When Rock gave it to me it had already been planed fairly smooth for flooring, but not nearly as smooth as it would need to be for a drink stand. Plus, you know, I needed to sand out all the places I screwed up. I'm not really what you would call "good with tools yet."
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After I had gotten the three main panels down to very approximate shapes, it was time to join them together. I decided on a pretty secure method. I drilled three holes in each piece and put a dowel through them. It's really quite sturdy. What did I use for the dowels? Why, my old friend the chopstick. What...they're free, the perfect size, free, and...free. And it's not like it has to withstand a hurricane or anything.
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Now here's where I get a little fancy and the trouble starts. Pop out my big calibre, the hole bore, the drill bit, a good couple inch diameter, and knock yo-self right through that plank. Yes indeed.
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Funky Cold Medina
Oh, here's the problem, though, of course you can't use the same drill bit to plug the hole back up with the Jarrah. First the big chews out nearly an eight of an inch of wood in its path of diameter! Secondly, the bit puts a hole right through the middle, so...no good. I drilled through the light wood planning on plugging it with the darker Jarrah, so I had to manually cut down a piece of Jarrah to round.
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It took absolutely forever. I'll spare you the details.
Anyway, that part was done. Moving on, I decided that just having one circle of Jarrah wood was not quite ornate enough for me. I wanted to try a bit of inlaying. It wasn't quite...hmm...I don't want to say successful. Perhaps excellent. Yes. It was successful but not excellent. It's pretty tricky! I ended up scoring lines with new sharp X-Acto blades and using my dremel tool to bore out the channels for the inlay pieces. It's...very precise and hard. I did not do a perfect job.
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Here's the weights holding the inlays down in place after gluing them in the channels. Don't worry you can see the whole thing soon.
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Meanwhile, the chassis - the metal stand, got a quick wipe-down and fresh coat of matte-black spray paint. Touch it up a bit and keep any rust off it.
Here we go. Here's how the wood shelf turned out:
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Here's the basic layout! It's a comet-like design. Lately I've been inspired by the comet motif. It's randomly turned up in my sketches and random syncrhonicitous encounters so I thought it would be neat to actually intentionally do a piece in this direction.
To emphasize this distinction, I decided to use a bit of stain. Nothing too dark. This is a pecan stain that I used on the area outside the comet's tail. I put two coats on this area.
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After two coats of the pecan stain, I put a couple coats of low gloss coat of protecting seal over the whole thing, sides and bottom included. It will be outside in all sorts of crummy Rochester weather, after all.
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And that's pretty much it! I think it turned out pretty well. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The edges are a bit off square. I wish I had a huge belt sander, because there are a couple dings in the surface of the wood - despite that I spent hours and hours sanding it with the palm sander, and a few other small issues that seem big because I'm obsessing over it.
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Overall, though, I think it has turned out pretty neat. Always nice to be able to revitalize something and to play with tools.
The End
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