You know, it is been quite sometimes since I have been able to build a piece of furniture for my own house. That is exactly what we are going today because we need some end tables.
Hot and Fresh Woodworking
The Wood Whisperer
Episode 34 – End Table (Pt. 1)
So, before we get started, we should probably talk a little bit about design concepts. Now, at some point in your wood working career, you decide that the plans that are out there are just not adequate anymore, and cannot find exactly what you are looking for and you need to design something yourself. It is really a great time in your wood working growth because you really start to learn how to put parts together. How to design relative sizes or parts, you are not just counting on someone else’s experience and something may majority in down to design your furniture piece for you. So, you have a general idea, you have a general size, a kind of to know what you wanted to look like, maybe you do not even know that, and that is when to start picking up every resource you can get your hands on, and put some sketches down on paper.
So I know I want an end table. I know I want something that maybe has some kind of carved legs or, you know, some nice soft curves in it that compliments the furniture that I have already built for my living room. I also, know the relative size because I know exactly where I wanted to go. So, those are sort of the restraining factors. And now, it all comes down to, is creativity.
Now, let me give you a little bit of explanation on how I see creativity and design, especially when it comes to things like originality. You know, I come from the science background. So, for me, I see these great discoveries and some of the most, you know, inventions. The best processes have been developed because they built on the experience and the work of other scientist before them, otherwise, no one would come out of—you know, from start to finish and be able to understand genetic code if it was not, already, built upon by previous work.
So, I can see furniture in a sort of the same way. Of course, there is original ideas that have not really been done before and a few people are capable of coming up with those. But to me, when you have got access to things like this design book, magazines, furniture that you see on the internet, those are your starting points. People have paved the way for us to take those ideas and just make them blossom into something even more beautiful. So, I do not think there is something to be ashamed off by finding a piece of furniture that you love, you think it is great. But you might be able to twick it a little bit to make it your own, and make it different enough from this person’s original work that you can call it your own. I do not think there is anything to be embarrassed off when you do that.
Looking through my design book, I found this really cool little table. It has got a glass top, curved legs, has kind of that “sculptive” one piece look that I am looking for. I think it is going to be perfect, but I do not have any plans. All I have is this little tiny picture. And, in fact, I think that is a good thing because the variability, just by me taking what I see and trying to do my own interpretation of that is going to give this piece. A little bit of a different look and different shape that will make it my own. So, if I had the exact dimensions and scale drawings of this, I might be tempted to copy and at exactly, and that is not what this is about. It is about being inspired and making my own version. And, if things are off a little bit low, no, they are not off, that is perfect for my piece of furniture. It might be off from destroying, but who cares. I am not trying to reproduce this. I try to build something new.
Did you know?
Furniture design books, regardless of age, are a great source of inspiration.
Amazon.com, Ebay, and Craiglist are the first places I would look.
So, the first step in the process is making a template. Without a template, the lengths are going to all vary from one to the other. We have got four of them to make, so it is very important that we get a nice solid template that we can work from. And, the good thing is, in this process of designing a template, we can work out all the things, all the details, and just make sure that everything looks the way we wanted to look. And in fact, joinery at this point is a second level consideration. I want to see what this leg looks like first. Get the way, I wanted to look and then make some joinery work within the confines of what I have constructed in a leg.
Okay. So, a lot of people are intimidated at this step because this is the point when we are going to take pencil to paper and create something out of nothing. All we have is a little bit of inspiration and a small drawing or a small photograph. And again we do not want to copy it exactly. So, what do we do? Well, the first thing is, I look at what my restrictions are. I know I do not want this table to be any higher than 22 inches, so I take my template material and I draw my mark at 22 inches at the top. A few other things we know. We know that we want multiple curves and we have a general idea where those go. I also know that I want from the top, the piece the sticks up to only be about three inches before that inside curve starts
Okay. So, you basically, start drawing it. I actually, draw right on my plywood, and I will draw this, maybe 10 or 20 times, erasing, drawing, erasing or sort of like manipulating the lines a little bit here and there just to refine them. Now, here is an example of what I might—the point that I might be at. The point that I might be at, that I would call Step one. I know, approximately, what I want these legs to look like. And I would draw my advent points here, my total height, and three inches down. I know I want an inside curve here, and to come back outside, then another inside curve to the point that it hits the foot. I know I want this piece to come up, thin the leg out in this area a little bit, and then come back out here and have a nice curve from the inside of the leg that is just very smoothly, meets up with this cross piece. And I know the leg piece itself is going to end somewhere in here and that is where we are going to come up with joinery, to fit that spot.
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