End tables

Post date: Sep 7, 2015 9:18:37 PM

I had some offcuts of larch I was going to toss but as I looked at the pile I thought: I bet I could make something nice out of this. Always up for a challenge and knowing that I probably wouldn't be happy with anything I bought off the shelf, I accepted.

The wood itself was the carcass of a 6"x6" post that had spent the last 2 years outside behind the garage exposed. I had already scavenged the best from it so what remained had lots of cracks, some dry rot, and a labyrinth of larvae borrows.

You can see the extensive damage in the tops that I am joining here:

even with the glue there were enough cracks to warrant a little bit of reinforcement:

I opted for steel cross braces just to try something new. This will be the last time I will wear sneakers while doing this kind of work :/. It will heal.

I usually try to avoid building things that require jigs but because I went with a compound 10 degrees on the legs I need to come up with something for the drill press. Simple enough but I did need to pay attention because none of the legs are identical in width:

3 coats of polyurethane and some assembly gave me these:

I used a black tinted wood fill to accent the worm holes. Some of these went right through.

The wood had a lot of discrepancies which I tried to preserve as well as I could. I hate the silver hardware though and it is quite visible even for an end table so I think I will try to source out something to match the braces.