Dr.Al
Old Oak
I think I've chosen my next project: it's time to make a new bedside table. For most of the 20 years I've lived in this house, I had a pine three-drawer chest that I inherited from my parents and used as a bedside table. It was quite deep and didn't leave much of a gap between the corner of the chest and the corner of the open door, but it wasn't too much of a problem and it did the job. Two years ago, my partner had a bad car accident and had to move around on crutches. There was no way she was going to be able to get into the bedroom (past the bedside table) so the chest of drawers got relegated to the spare room.
As a short-term solution to provide a reasonable height shelf for the sunrise alarm clock etc, I replaced the chest of drawers with two motorcycle panniers, one on top of the other. Two years later and my bedside table is still two motorcycle panniers! It's probably about time I did something about it.
I've been pondering on design ideas for quite a long time. A couple of years ago Matt Estlea released a video series on making a shaker style table and I like the design of it (although I'm not sold on the somewhat ornate top). The shape of Matt Estlea's table wouldn't suit the position and I want something quite a lot bigger (to roughly match the height of the mattress).
This is what I've come up with as a first stab at a design:
I'd very much welcome comments / suggestions on how it looks. I've modelled the top as solid but it'll probably be a panel glued out of two planks. The top is 24 mm thick but with a substantial chamfer on the underside to make it seem a bit thinner. For a sense of overall scale, the top is 300 × 500 mm and the overall height is about 700 mm. The legs are 40 mm square at the top, tapering down (on the inside faces only) to 26 mm square at the bottom.
I haven't decided what wood to make it from but I'm probably leaning towards Sycamore, Sweet Chestnut or Oak. Oak would match the bed, but I don't see that as an essential requirement. There's an American Black Walnut shelf thing that currently sits on the panniers and I expect I'll move it onto the new table, so there will definitely be a mixture of wood species regardless of what I choose to make it from.
If I hide the drawer and the top surface from the model then the structure becomes a bit clearer I think (note that I haven't modelled the planks that the drawer will run on yet:
With the legs hidden, all the planned joinery is visible:
Mortice and tenons for almost everything and a dovetail lap joint for the top rail at the front, much the same as Matt Estlea did in his video series if I'm remembering rightly (it was quite a long time ago that I watched it). I might change the panel tenons into haunched ones, if only because I've never tried cutting one.
Again, any suggestions for design changes would be very welcome. It'll be a while before I start work on it (I need to buy the wood first and I've got some busy weekends coming up) so there's plenty of time for design changes.
As a short-term solution to provide a reasonable height shelf for the sunrise alarm clock etc, I replaced the chest of drawers with two motorcycle panniers, one on top of the other. Two years later and my bedside table is still two motorcycle panniers! It's probably about time I did something about it.
I've been pondering on design ideas for quite a long time. A couple of years ago Matt Estlea released a video series on making a shaker style table and I like the design of it (although I'm not sold on the somewhat ornate top). The shape of Matt Estlea's table wouldn't suit the position and I want something quite a lot bigger (to roughly match the height of the mattress).
This is what I've come up with as a first stab at a design:
I'd very much welcome comments / suggestions on how it looks. I've modelled the top as solid but it'll probably be a panel glued out of two planks. The top is 24 mm thick but with a substantial chamfer on the underside to make it seem a bit thinner. For a sense of overall scale, the top is 300 × 500 mm and the overall height is about 700 mm. The legs are 40 mm square at the top, tapering down (on the inside faces only) to 26 mm square at the bottom.
I haven't decided what wood to make it from but I'm probably leaning towards Sycamore, Sweet Chestnut or Oak. Oak would match the bed, but I don't see that as an essential requirement. There's an American Black Walnut shelf thing that currently sits on the panniers and I expect I'll move it onto the new table, so there will definitely be a mixture of wood species regardless of what I choose to make it from.
If I hide the drawer and the top surface from the model then the structure becomes a bit clearer I think (note that I haven't modelled the planks that the drawer will run on yet:
With the legs hidden, all the planned joinery is visible:
Mortice and tenons for almost everything and a dovetail lap joint for the top rail at the front, much the same as Matt Estlea did in his video series if I'm remembering rightly (it was quite a long time ago that I watched it). I might change the panel tenons into haunched ones, if only because I've never tried cutting one.
Again, any suggestions for design changes would be very welcome. It'll be a while before I start work on it (I need to buy the wood first and I've got some busy weekends coming up) so there's plenty of time for design changes.
