Hall Table
Hall Table
Material: Quarter-Sawn Sapele, Eastern Walnut
Dimensions: 120″Long, 14″ Wide, 26″ High
A wholesale client of mine in San Francisco sent me this project. A very simple and very long hall table.
The first step was to flatten the two 8″ wide boards on the jointer and mill down to 1.75″ using the thickness planer. You can’t see it in this picture, but the grain detail on the quarter-sawn Sapele never ceases to amaze me every time I mill down a board!
Once we milled the boards to the correct thickness, we flattened off one edge on the jointer, cut the board to 7.125″ on the table saw, and glued both jointed edges together. After gluing overnight, we sent the entire top through a widebelt sander to get a perfectly flat finished surface.
Now that the top was done, it was time to focus on the legs. After milling up four leg blanks 30″ long and 2.5″ square, we marked for the two mortises, and using the hollow-chisel mortiser, made all eight mortises.
The legs are the only part of the project that have any detail. That detail is a slight angle from just below the stringers to the bottom of the leg. The top dimension of theleg will be 2.5″ square, while the bose of the legwill be 2″ square. That .25″ angle on each side will add just enough detail to keep the console table from looking to farm style, yet simple enough to not look out of place.
With the legs mortised and the sides angled, we milled up the four stringers out of Eastern Walnut, tennoned each end, sanded all the legs and stringers, and began the assembly.
The client requested a different material for the stringers, either Maple of Walnut, to help break up the vast expanses of Sapele. After looking at the 3D rendered drawing with Sapele and Maple, he decided it was too striking of a contrast, and chose to go with the more subtle look of Eastern Walnut.
As you can see, a glue-up that extends over a length of 118″ doesn’t lend itself to an easy glue-up. We had one long custom-made pipe clamp from a project a decade ago that was long enough, but nothing else. Well, it was just time to improvise. Using two clamps facing in opposite directions and overlapping the ends in the middle, we were able to make “one” pipe clamp.
The two white sticks are supports to keep the middle of the stringer at the correct height to ensure the base glues up correctly.
After the top was sanded smooth, it was attached to the base via 14 pocket screws and no glue. We chose to use pocket screws to allow for a certain amount of wood movement. If the top was glued to the base using dowels of loose tennons, there is the chance in the future that as the top expands and contracts, the glue joints would breaks free and cause all kinds of havoc between the top and the base.
The three pictures above are what the console table looks like with three coats of tung oil on the base and four coats on the top. With quarter-sawn Sapele you are looking at the edge of the grain, not the face of the grain. That means when the oil hits the wood and sinks down into the pores, the oil beads reflect the light in all different directions, giving the surface a shimmering, iridescent look. Very striking indeed!
After allowing the tung oil to dry for a couple of days, it was time to ship this table off to San Francisco. Packing and shipping my pieces of furniture still scares me to death. I worry about every possible thing that could go wrong! This table was pretty simple though. After covering the top in two layers of 1″ bubble wrap, and thouroughly wrapping it with plastic stretch wrap (the greatest packing aid known to man!), we laid it upside down on the base of the pallet, nailed on all the necessary 2×4′s and braces, attached the top, lined the sides in cardboard, and had FedEx National LTL pick it up!
July 27th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
That is just gorgeous…
July 27th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
You are to kind Kayla.
July 28th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Hi,
I’ve been looking for a long narrow table to go behind my sofa…appr. 80 inches long, no wider than 10 inches and probably 3 or so feet high. I was wondering how much you would charge to make one for me? I wouldn’t want really expensive wood..something like oak would be nice.
Thanks,
Mary
December 18th, 2011 at 10:04 am
I am looking for a very long console table 90″ long 15″ wide, which I can then paint. Could you let me know how much this would cost. Thank you