When I first started on this project my only goal was to make a decent coffee table for my niece that was about to get married.  When you first get married most of your furniture is handy-downs, from the Goodwill store or some cheap import from Wal-Mart.  So I got to thinking, instead of just making something decent, let’s go for something nice.  Something that will last through those early years and be of a nice enough design that she wouldn’t mind keeping it around for a few years.  So I started sketching.

I didn’t really care for any of my initial sketches; they were too much like stuff I had built in the past.  I thought why not try on a new style, something that will push my skills a little.  So I decided to try something with some kind of curvy leg.  Not really knowing my niece’s taste in furniture I decided on a traditional cabriole style leg with an oval table top and double-curved stretchers with a bead along the bottom.  All three of these design elements would take me in directions I had never bothered to try in the past.

I had some knotty alder in the shop so I wanted to use it for this project.  I filled all the knots with a tinted epoxy.  I’ll do a video on this process soon.

For the top I wanted to use a traditional technique I had seen on The Woodright’s Shop.  I never used to like Roy, but as I have matured as a woodworker I’ve grown to appreciate his skills (even though I will never use most of them, I like power tools too much).  In this particular episode he had some craftsmen from Colonial Williamsburg on and they used a looped piece of string, three nails and a pencil to layout a perfect oval.  I used that same technique then cut it out with my Makita jigsaw (review forthcoming) and Bosch’s new Xtra-Clean blades (T308B) - which are awesome by the way.  I was impressed with the results so I will probably use that technique again if I ever do anymore oval work.  I will be posting a Skillbuilders video soon to show how to do it.

With the oval cut I then added a edge profile.  On the lower half I did a 1/4″ round over and on the top I used a Freud roman ogee bit that I can’t seem to find an example of.

With the stretchers I wanted them to be curved in two planes - I was trying to avoid any straight lines.  This again was done with my Makita and the Bosch blades.  A bandsaw would have been better suited for this task but I don’t yet own a bandsaw and the jigsaw did well enough.  The hard part was adding the bead along the lower curve of the stretchers.  Since they were curved in two planes I couldn’t come up with a way to do this safely and consistently with my router so I borrowed an idea I saw on Kari Hultman’s blog.  The straight edged scratch stock wasn’t going to work along a curved surface so I made a body that was curved on the cutting face so the scratch stock could follow the contour of the strecther.  I don’t know what the proper name is for this tool but I call it a scratching plane.

This is the first tool I have ever made for shop use so that was pretty fun too.  I haven’t perfected the sharpening of the scratch stock, but the results were decent.

The real test of skill, in my opinion, lay in the parts that took the longest to make - the cabriole legs.  I put together a bunch of ideas I had read about in Woodsmith, Fine Woodworking and Popular Woodworking over the years and some stuff from The Wood Whisperer episode #64 and episode #40.  I wasn’t able to locate knotty alder in the thickness I wanted so I laminated 5 pieces of 4/4 stock. jointed and planed it square then rotated it 45 degrees and jointed and planed it square in this new orientation giving me glue lines that would face out towards the outboard edge of the leg.  I just ‘needed’ it to be perfectly symmetrical.

With that complete I made a template from 1/8″ birch ply and traced it onto all the faces of the in the orientation in which each side would be cut.  I made a rather long video demonstrating this you can see HERE.  Hopefully my future videos will be shorter and to the point.

Anyways, after rough cutting these leg blanks with my dear Makita jigsaw once again I went to work with rasps and files.  Lots of them.  That was probably the task that was the most fun out of this whole project.

Once the legs were done I joined them with mortise and tenons and added a square-plug-covered screw at each corner for good measure.

I attached the top with z-clip table top fasteners from Woodcraft .  I don’t think they are really called z-clips, but that is what they look like so that is what I call them.

With that all done I weight tested it by climbing on top.  It supported my 260 pounds without so much as a squeak so I think it will handle normal coffee table tasks just fine.

With all the pieces made I needed to get some finish on it.  I sanded to 150 grit and gave it a ‘washcoat’ of a 1 lb, clear shellac.  Then I went over that with General Finishes Antique Walnut gel stain.  After letting that dry overnight I added several coats of a 1/3 boiled linseed oil, 1/3 Mineral spirits, 1/3 poly mixture sanding with 320 grit between each coat.  After several of those, being in an experimenting mindset I did a couple more coats of a 1/2 gloss poly, 1/2 mineral spirits mix and then went over the entire table with 2500 grit Mirka Mirlon which I was impressed with.

With all the real work done we then delivered it to my niece.  Now on to the next project.

Here is the finished work…