Year 8 Side Table

Art Deco is a cool design style that became popular in the 1920s and 1930s. It mixes fancy decorations with modern materials like glass and metal. You can see Art Deco in buildings, furniture, and even in fashion. The style is known for its bold colors, geometric shapes, and shiny surfaces. Some famous examples are the Chrysler Building in New York and the Great Gatsby movie. Art Deco was all about looking forward and celebrating the future!

Minimalism is a design style that started in the mid-20th century and focuses on simplicity and clean lines. It uses just a few colors and shapes, making spaces feel open and calm. Minimalist design often overlaps with geometric patterns, like squares and triangles, which help create a modern look without too much clutter. You can see minimalism in art, architecture, and even everyday objects, where the idea is to highlight only what’s necessary and beautiful. 

This is my one of my favorite designs and I chose it because I loved the minimalism that lived inside of it. It was unique to other geometric designs because it did not have a specific pattern and wasn't very predictable. I used 3 colors to show different wood colors. I tried to make it that the same color is not next to each other and that worked except for the dark wood parts. 

This was made using the isometric grid and unintentionally turned 3D. I liked this because it was simple, minimalistic that was easy and appealing to the eye. I think this is my ultimate favorite design out of the other 3.

To begin this process, I must chamfer the table. To do this, I selected the chamfer tool and select all the edges so it turns yellow. When I selected all the edges, I pressed the green tick which saved my chamfer. 

This is the final outcome of my piece!

I also numbered my pieces so it is easier to piece them together if I cut them out. 

For the test I used the MDF material which is made out of leftover wood dust. This is perfect for making test shapes as it is cheap, easy to cut and easy to find. For this, I just drew the outline of the shape that I cut out (above) on to the MDF material. I used the scroll saw to cut it and this is the final outcome. I made one more because I thought that I could do better and I wanted more practice with the scroll saws. 

For my wood, I got wood in the medium and dark areas. Howevcer, it was hard to find the perfect wood color I wanted to find. The wood color I preferred was a little orange however most of the dark colored woods mostly had red undertones. In the medium section, it was less harder however most of the woods were pretty light so there was less contrast between the medium and light colored woods. Sadly, the dark colored wood was two-toned (one side was lighter than the other one) so it looked a little uneven. 

I decided to start off with the dark colored wood. The first thing I did was to draw one shape on the wood. Surprisingly the height of one piece (approximately) was half the wood so I used the band saw (with the teacher's assistance since it is hard and dangerous) to cut the wood in half. After that, I just chose a random half and drew shapes on the wood. I made sure to use a ruler. I cut the wood on the scroll saws but I found it difficult compared to making the test pieces. The wood took longer to cut and if pushed too hard, the wood would come out wobbly. Sadly, most of the pieces were wobbly and were smaller than the actually pieces. In my attempt to fix the wood, I accidentally cut myself (yes I had to go to the hospital) so that is something to beaware about. The week after that when I got back, I sanded the pieces so they were less wobbly and more straight. Fortunately, some of the pieces fit in because I don't know why this is but for some reason, some pieces are bigger and some are smaller in the template. I repeated this process and in my 2nd go, the wood was less wobbly and it looked a lot better!

After cutting the shapes, I roughly put the wood where I want to put them. As you can see, since the wood is two-toned, it looks uneven but there was really nothing I could do about the color. In some pieces, the design cuts off so I need to cut those parts off. Additionally, some wood pieces were to small compared to the design which meant that I need to fill it with wood filler which I hope will look natural.

This photo (the one below) is after I cut the parts off. You can see that it fortunately fits perfectly to the size of the design. There are more pieces such as this so I must cut them off was well. The hard thing about cutting these pieces off is that they are quite small so it is hard to cut it perfectly while being careful. 

I need to add finishing touches such as sanding away some small parts or cutting some parts that I didn't cut yet so it fits in the square shape. To sand or cut it accurately, I drew lines to where I want to cut or sand to just so I do not need to go and sand again or so I do not cut too much off. After this, I am going to start cutting the wood pieces for the medium colored wood.

For the medium wood, I also used the band saw just like for the dark colored wood with the same reason of how all my pieces have repeating shapes with (mostly) similar heights. Since I used it better, I felt more comfortable and familiar around it but I still had the teacher's assistance but I felt much more confident using the machine. After that, I just draw my pieces on to the wood, cut and repeat. After I finish the whole wood plank, I go try to fit my pieces in between the gaps. I cut or sand according to how 'off' the shape is, If the pieces have a little gap, there's nothing I can do (unless I make a new piece but that is time consuming) so as I  said before, I will fill it wood filler. I continue this proccess until I finish cutting all the shapes. 

Some problems I faced was that the wood pieces was sticking out of the square shape and most of the time, I just sanded it away but sometimes, the protruding parts were too big to sand but to small to cut using the scroll saw. So I used the band saw to cut those 'too big but too small' parts. The teacher did this for me and I just drew the lines on the parts I wanted to cut. This was very efficient as the band saw doesn't take much time up and is less dangerous than using the scroll saw (I mean, at least for me?). Some other problems were waiting in the line. While not necessarily a problem, I felt like this was time consuming and contribute to 'lack of time'. Therefore, I decided when I was going to cut something, I cut as many pieces I can at once, when I sanded, I sanded after I cut many pieces and although this might be annoying for other people, I think this was the best way to compromise as you can get more done and minimize the chance of having not enough time. 

Some other problems were that some parts were sticking out of the inital square shape. However, this isn't as much of a big problem because I need to plane the square shape after gluing which will cut those parts off. However, I still need to be aware if the shapes were too small and there were gaps between the piece and the edges, then that would be a problem because it would be too difficult to fill that part with wood filler.

Another problem I faced was that I wasn't aware that 3 of my pieces had a small line in the middle which was a shorter height then the other pieces. That meant I either have to sand the whole thing down to match those heights or just remake the pieces. I figured that just remaking the pieces would take less time so I did that with the help of my teacher who used the band saw for me since I was running out of time to glue in that lesson.

Another problem is that some of the pieces have like a little lines that was caving in on the end meaning that I would have to fill that up. I replaced a piece with a relatively big line before I glued the whole thing down, but sadly, some pieces had some lines so I need to fill that up. 

For this stage, I needed to take all my pieces off and then put a 'not too thin but not too thick' layer of glue on the wood piece. I spread the glue with an extra piece of wood that I had not used or needed. After that, I stuck each piece on making sure I aligned them well. I stuck the end pieces first because if they did not align to the design, then it would be difficult to use wood filler to fill the missing parts up. After I stuck some pieces down, I had to push it so that it sticks better and it stays there. I typically did this after every row of wood (my design had three rows) and when I was sticking the pieces of the next row, I put something heavy on top. I think that helped with not moving the pieces that might've potentially been affected while gluing the other pieces. After gluing everything, I checked everything and gave it a nice push and then waited it for it to dry. This typically takes around 1 day (maybe more) to dry however I will continue with this in the next lesson. 

In this lesson, the band saw was used to cut the edges of the table. Everybody must do this since the plywood that we stuck our pieces on to are slightly bigger than the actual square. Additionally, I had some pieces that were sticking out. To do this, I used the plastic guide to help to accurately cut the table. On the plastic guide, there are important measurements, such as the center point.