Round oak table (a la GE Street in the V&A) Day 5 Stained

[Mike G]

For an introduction to this project, visit this thread, where numerous different options for alternatives were discussed.

The design is a straight knock-off of a classic Victorian Gothic Revival piece, house in the V&A, and brought to us by AndyT. The original was quite large, but this is to be a small side table, so its proportions are inevitably going to vary. As this is the first hand-tool-only WIP I've done for a while, there are an absolute plethora of photos. For those to whom egg sucking comes naturally, feel free to skip ahead. Oh, and WARNING...........sharpening is discussed!



These offcuts from my recent door builds were the raw material. After laying them out and scrawling with chalk, I made my decisions and started on some woodwork. I'm not ripping reasonably straight-grained wood, when I have a hatchet to hand:





None of the boards were particularly flat, so even though 2 boards provided enough width to do the width of the top, I split them roughly in half to ease the flattening job (and for another reason we'll see later):



The astute amongst you will notice that one of the boards is not like the others, being planed and square-edged. My riving didn't work out perfectly, so I had to raid my off-cuts stock:



People tend to think of a draw knife as a crude instrument for hacking off large volumes of wood in a hurry. Whilst it can do that, it doesn't take much practice at all to be able to achieve very fine shavings and a fairly decent finish:



Nonetheless, for edge-jointing, I needed better, and out came the number 6:



For a variety of work-holding reasons, I want to keep the top square-ish for a while, so this is the table-top roughed out ready for flattening on one face:



You may or may not be able to see that I have made no attempt to make all the boards parallel-edged. Two of them taper quite markedly. I've noticed this a number of times with old "country" furniture......and it's not so much about saving wood as about saving effort.

Skip ahead if you aren't interested in flattening boards, or a bit of sharpening.

My number 6 is the premier tool for flattening boards in my workshop, and it needed revival prior to starting. I only have a single bevel on my plane irons (no primary and secondary bevels). This means I never have to re-grind. I use a honing guide for plane irons, and never for chisels (where I do have a secondary bevel). I set up the honing guide with a simple jig:






Previously, I didn't have to use the 300 grit diamond plate except for restoratrion, but the 600 plate is getting a bit tired these days. So a few seconds on 300, then 600, then 1200, and then flip it over and polish up the other side to the bevel, removing the burr:



Then onto the strop:



The biggest user of time in the whole sharpening process is setting up the plane and then walking into the house to wash my hands before beginning work.

Here are my £500 winding sticks direct from a 200 year old Japanese hermit whose family have been making these since the beginning of time:



I don't use them the same way as others, either. I sight over the near one and under the far one.....aiming to get a parallel gap. It works for me, and if your mileage varies, as Americans apparently say, then that's fine by me too:



I didn't take any photos of a pile of shavings, but I simply flattened one side (the top) in the normal way. None were flat to start with, and none took more than 2 or 3 minutes to flatten. I did clean up some sapwood to reduce the amount of planing:



They turned out OK, albeit not terribly well colour-matched:



It will become important to remember that I don't have thicknessed boards. I have no idea whether or not the other sides are even close to parallel with the top, and it won't make any material difference.

I'll jump ahead to another post now, as things get a bit clumsy with too many photos.

 

[Mike G]

There was one uncooperative bit of gnarly oak which is going to cause issues later:



I took a rest from the grunt work of board preparation, and made a template for the legs. I've no drawing, and was simply judging from a couple of photos. There is always some old Cornflakes packet cardboard in my workshop:



I shall disturb no electron whatever in the making of this table (other than heating and lighting, you know....) EXCEPT for cutting out this template. This rubbishy fluffy 3mm MDF is unworkable with anything other than a bandsaw:



The foot extension-thing is too long, and will be trimmed right at the end. After marking out the leg, it's back to the draw knife:



And just to show that you really can sneak up on a line with it:





I picked up the first leg and waved it around on my bench, until I found an angle I liked for the splay. I've no idea what it is, but I recorded it on a roofer's adjustable square:



And cut off the top and bottom:



I then planed up the faces, with no attention whatever paid to whether or not they were parallel:



Once planed, I re-marked the detail at the lower end:



.....cut off the bulk of the waste:



..........and then pared away the remainder. By the way, note an old bench-hook being used as a bench protector. I don't like this style of bench-hook at all for sawing, but for chisel work they can be useful:







There are cross-members (stretchers with a cross-halving joint) at the lower middle of the legs, and at the top, and I wanted to take the 27+mm stock down a bit for these, as they'd look a bit heavy left as they are. I've no idea what thickness I went for, and they may well all be different. I NEVER, but never, use a handsaw in a vice. Here I am using a handsaw in a vice:



This beast is very hard to control, and I did cross my line (on the reverse face) on one of the pieces. I'll use that up under the table top. Anyway, a lot of set and some big ugly teeth are the reason it tends to go where it wants to:



One of these cross pieces is going to be different from the others, in that it will be jointed into the underside of the table top:



The difference in the width is the point at which the shoulder of a sliding dovetail occurs. I used a little Record plough plane to make the narrowest groove I could:





It works really nicely, but that is always how the waste ends up: curled around the front shaft of the fence.

 

[Mike G]

There is nothing marked out for the dovetail at this point. I just ploughed a groove to some arbitrary depth:





The pencil marks were for me to gauge whether I was about on the right sort of track. Looks OK to me.

I then planed away with a shoulder plane until I had one side of the dovetail done. This will be the straight side (all of the taper happens on one side only):





I then marked a random taper on the opposite side:



.......and planed down to that line with a rebate plane:





I then re-did the little groove with the plough plane, to follow the taper, and did the shoulder-plane thing again to make the other side:



To make the female part of the joint is somewhat trickier, especially as the boards are nowhere near the same thickness:



Cross-grain planing is so under-rated! I simply flattened the rough area where the cross-piece will go:





David Attenborough is on, so I'll have to finish this tomorrow morning.........

 

[NickM]

Great stuff Mike.

I agree that cross-grain planing is often the way to go.

 

[duke]

There was one uncooperative bit of gnarly oak which is going to cause issues later:

View attachment 30132

I took a rest from the grunt work of board preparation, and made a template for the legs. I've no drawing, and was simply judging from a couple of photos. There is always some old Cornflakes packet cardboard in my workshop:

View attachment 30133

I shall disturb no electron whatever in the making of this table (other than heating and lighting, you know....) EXCEPT for cutting out thjis template. This rubbishy fluffy MDF is unworkable with anything other than a bandsaw:

View attachment 30134

The foot extension-thing is too long, and will be trimmed right at the end. After marking o

View attachment 30136

View attachment 30137

I picked up the first leg and waved it around on my bench, until I found an angle I liked for the splay. I've no idea what it is, but I recorded it on a roofer's adjustable square:

View attachment 30138

And cut off the top and bottom:

View attachment 30139

I then planed up the faces, with no attention whatever paid to whether or not they were parallel:

View attachment 30140

Once planed, I re-marked the detail at the lowere end:

View attachment 30141

.....cut off the bulk of the waste:

View attachment 30142

..........and then pared away the remainder:

View attachment 30143View attachment 30144

View attachment 30145

View attachment 30146

There are cross-members at the lower middl;e of the legs, and at the top, and I wanted to take the 27+mm stock down a bit for these, as they'd look a bit heavy left as they are. I've no idea what thickness I went for, and they may well all be different. I NEVER, but never, use a handsaw in a vice. Here I am using a handsaw in a vice:

View attachment 30147

This beast is very hard to control, and I did cross my line (on the reverse face) on one of the pieces. I'll use that up under the table top. Anyway, a lot of set and some big ugly teeth are the reason it tends to go where it wants to:

View attachment 30148

One of these cross pieces is going to be different from the others, in that it will be jointed into the underside of the table top:

View attachment 30149

The difference in the width is the point at which the shoulder of a sliding dovetail occurs. I used a little Record plogh plane to make the narrowest groove I could:

View attachment 30151

View attachment 30150

It works really nicely, but that is always how the waste ends up: curled around the front shaft of the fence.

There is nothing marked out for the dovetail at this point. I just ploughed a groove to some arbitrary depth:

View attachment 30154

View attachment 30155

The pencil marks were for me to gauge whether I was about on the right sort of track. Looks OK to me.

I then planed away with a shoulder plane until I had one side of the dovetail done. This will be the straight side (all the taper happens on one side only):

View attachment 30156

View attachment 30156

I then marked a random taper on the opposite side:

View attachment 30158

.......and planed down to that line with a rebate plane:

View attachment 30159

View attachment 30160

I then re-did the little groove with the plough plane, to follow the taper, and did the shoulder-plane thing again to make the other side:

View attachment 30163

To make the female part of the joint is somewhat trickier, especially as the boards are nowhere near the same thickness:

View attachment 30164

Cross-grain planing is so under-rated! I simply flattened the rough area where the cross-piece will go:

View attachment 30165

View attachment 30166

David Attenborough is on, so I'll have to finish this tomorrow morning.........

I'm enjoying this build Mike and love the winding sticks!

 

[johnward]

Interested in your comments on your No.6. I love mine and find it a very useful plane.

 

[Mike G]

Having got a flat section across the boards, this amounts to a depression in the middle of their lengths. This means that you have to remember you can't use that face of the boards as a reference face...........and that rules out a number of marking and tool options.

To mark out for the tapered female part of the joint, firstly, I just sat the male in place and drew along both long edges onto the boards:



Then mark the depth of the bottom of the dovetail, as made. This is the only mark I referenced from the working face. Drawing the angle up from the bottom corners of the intersection of the outside width gives you the top width:



Then you just have to gauge parallel, carefully:



Sloping (undercut) sides of a sliding dovetail (female) are extremely difficult to do with a chisel, but on wide boards you have little option. One of the reasons I split these boards in half was to enable me to saw the sides, which makes this a quick and accurate job:



The a chisel makes short work of the waste. I start by chopping roughly along the centreline to make the waste pieces small enough to fit out of the top of the channel:



Where would we be without bench-hooks for hand-tool work?



Note, because I can't use the surface of the timber as a reference, I can't use a router plane. That means paring was the only option, but it's only minutes of a job get a suitable finish. Critically, the floor of the channel is lowered by a mm or so. It plays no part in the strength of the joint, and so just need to be out of the way. You can see the second line here:



You then offer up the male part, and check for fit. Adjustments are generally made on the male side of the joint rather than the female, as it is much easier:




That, folks, is plenty good enough, so long as the male slides in far enough. A couple of strokes of the shoulder plane soon sorts that. Here are the middle two boards (you'll see why I did them first in a second) on the cross-piece:



It difficult to saw a blind dovetail slot. The trick is to chop out a mortice at the far end, first, as your saw then has an open end to move in, and can get down to full depth........impossible without the mortice:





At this point I realised that the sliding dovetail couldn't be blind both ends. It can be with a short fat joint, but not this one. Nowhere near. So, I was reconciled to having to put a Dutchman in the edge of the table. I made the final tapered slot, but for some reason it was way too narrow, and my cross-piece got nowhere near in as far as it should.

By now, I'd been working all day, and was rushing to get this joint done ready for gluing up this evening. I made a monumental cock-up.

In the following photo you can see my attempted remedy for the overly tight slot was to chop out a clearance mortice , knowing this would be in the waste off the edge of the table, and extend a little onto the underside of the table edge where it would make a good slot for a Dutchman. Unfortunately, I got disorientated, and chopped out of the good side, rather than the waste side. I've chalked in the rough circle of the table edge, and the arrowed section is the cock up. That should have been left alone, and the other part of the slot widened. Damn!:



My first attempted fix was to flip the board around and adjust the slot: So, I cut and planed a straight edge to the outside of the board, and tiffled with the dovetail slot:



Unfortunately, the lack of reference faces and non-thicknessed boards meant I had little chance. It didn't work out. This is the top (good) side of the table in a dry fit:



There was nothing for it other than to insert a Dutchman and do the joint again. I raided the waste bin:





After cutting it carefully to a useful width (almost nothing is measured on this project), I knifed, chiseled and sawed one side of the new housing:







That then gave me a reference edge against which to insert my Dutchman (graving piece), and mark for the other edge.

That's my image limit.......I'll be back.

 

[Mike G]

Interested in your comments on your No.6. I love mine and find it a very useful plane.

If I was on Desert Island Planes, and had to rescue only one plane from the waves, it would be my number 6.

 

[Dr.Al]

If I was on Desert Island Planes, and had to rescue only one plane from the waves, it would be my number 6.

Apart from a quick test after sharpening it just after I bought it, I've never used mine.

 

[Mike G]

Marking:



Rough hogging out of waste:



Now, remember I can't use a router plane because the board is anything-but-flat on this side. So, needing a flat bottom for a good joint, I pared with a 1-1/2" chisel:



I roughed-off some of the excess thickness from the Dutchman to save work later:



Then glued it in:



Given this needs an hour or two to dry, it's going to be a long day in the workshop. Whilst waiting for that, I'd better find something else to do. I decided to do the ends of the stretchers. I knew the angle, but didn't know the length, so I mocked it up on the bench. The edge of the white batten is the centreline of the table:



I took a measurement at the dot each leg has to locate the mortice, and so could mark out the shoulders:



Obviously, you transfer marks rather than measure wherever you possibly can. That could be the last measurement on the job other than setting out the radius for the table-top circle.

Again, remember that these pieces aren't thicknessed. They won't be far off, but each tenon, and therefore each mortice, will be a slightly different thickness/ width:



The shoulders are so narrow that I knifed and chiseled down to depth, rather than use a saw:



How to remove such a thin bit of wood? The thing is, this face will be a show face, visible on the tusk tenon, so it needs to be good. I pared and scraped:







There was a repair to do (a pre-existing crack):



Eight cheeks done, and that was enough time for the glue of the Dutchman. I hogged off the bulk with my wooden scrub plane. It's a beast. It doesn't take prisoners, and isn't subtle. The bulk was gone in seconds:





Remembering that this graving piece is in a hollow. I got it down flush by cross-grain planing with a block plane:





....and then marked out for the joint I should have done properly a couple of hours earlier:

 

[Mike G]

Apart from a quick test after sharpening it just after I bought it, I've never used mine.

I don't think you work with as big boards as I do.

 

[Mike G]

The proper joint was soon made:



The blind end of the dovetail as made blind:



I waxed up the dovetail male, because I want to be able to get it out after gluing up the top:



And finally, I glued up the top:



So, at the end of Day 1 I have the top glued, the legs shaped, and the stretchers prepared. The mortice and tenons for the stretchers will be the last joinery, and apart from shaping the top, the rest of the job is just planing, scraping, and removing arises.

 

[AndyP]

You knocked off early then?

Are those winding sticks really only 200 years old? Or are you winding more than just the boards?

Great read.

 

[Dr.Al]

So, at the end of Day 1

That looks like about a month's work at the pace I go

Fascinating read as ever. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Mike G]

That looks like about a month's work at the pace I go

Well, it was more work than I wanted because of the big mistake.....but I did also want to make the point that hand-tool work doesn't mean slow work. The table should be finished (bar the finish) today, and with gluing time, it wouldn't be any quicker than that in a machine shop (as a one-off). Of course, if you were making a batch of these, a machine based workshop would be a whole lot quicker.

 

[Dr.Al]

I suspect a lot of my slow pace is down to lack of experience/skill and using various things that could be called techniques and could be called crutches - like making sure all of the wood is square and parallel as the first stage so that later stages are as easy as possible. There were a few times in your description where it seemed like having flat wood would have made it a lot easier, but I can also see that the time saved by not flattening the wood makes it much quicker overall.

It's a testament to your skill that you can work confidently and competently with the off-parallel wood and that you know which bits need to be planed smooth and which bits don't. I'm still at the point where every joint needs a lot of thought and I try to make it as easy for myself as I can! It probably doesn't help that I have a habit of starting projects before I've quite figured out what it is I'm doing (q.v. my garden table, which has nicely squared wood, but I haven't progressed much further than that due to design uncertainty).

 

[Mike G]

It's only a year or two ago that you were calling yourselve a novice, Al. Your work 2 years in to your woodworking career is way better than mine was at the same stage. I think the internet has a part to play in that speed of learning, as anyone can now look up a video to see how others tackle a situation. So, I've got a 40 year head start on you to thank for being reasonably efficient. I also probably get more time at it per workshop day.

 

[AndyT]

Really nice build, at a cracking pace. I will always side with anyone who shows that hand work can be speedy even though I rarely do that in my own projects.

My only minor gripe is that you didn't use the joint we discussed in this thread

A double stopped dovetail housing!

Here's a link to a German bloke doing a through dovetail housing and a double stopped(!) housing using a router and a bandsaw: It's obviously completely visual and so I will not describe it further. I do wonder about an application for the double stopped thing but maybe somebody might think...

www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk

but you have to choose one approach, and annoying people can always ask "what about the others"

 

[Dr.Al]

It's only a year or two ago that you were calling yourself a novice, Al.

4½ years since I started, but yes: just over 2 years since I sold the table saw and started to embrace the idea of hand tools.

I still call myself a novice though

 

[Mike G]

Unfortunately, the phone rang. This cost me a couple of hours in the workshop, so I didn't complete the joinery. I made good progress, though.

I started by de-clamping the table top, and cleaning it up:



Despite having a finely set cap iron, a razor sharp blade, and a fine mouth on my number 4 smoother, I still managed some tear-out. Ths Stanley scraper plane is an absolute genius tool, and deals with gnarly bits of wood with ease:



I put a pencil in a trammel, and marked out the outline :



........and then used my homemade frame saw (is it a frame saw?) to cut around outside the line:





Whilst hanging the frame saw up, this beast caught my eye:





I did maybe a quarter of the way around the edge before giving up on it. It was the same problem as I had when I last tried it: chattering:



So, I grabbed a plane and finished off the cleaning up with that:



I left one area, where there will soon be a Dutchman (of sorts):



I'll plane the insert and the edge at the same time.

From the picture 2 up ^^, you can see the different thicknesses of the edge, with all the variation being on the underside. Next time you're in an antique shop, turn over any small table or stool and you'll find adze or axe marks on the underside of the top. It only use to get tidied up around the edges........and that's what I'll be doing. Firstly, I marked a line all round:



And after securing the work, I just planed of the outside 2 or 3 inches, to bring the edge down to the line:





I used my original number 4. This was my only 2 handed plane for the first 12 or 15 uears of my woodworking life. Note the laminated oak handle I made for it some years ago. I thought it would be a good idea to make it a bit fatter than normal plane handles. It wasn't:



In the spirit of not doing any measuring, I found the centreline of the dovetailed cross-piece using dividers:



......and then set out and shaped the ends:







That's the image limit, so I'll carry on in a sec.

 

[Mike G]

Cleaning up small curves on end-grain using only hand-tools is something of a nightmare. Firstly, I pare across the grain, using whatever will work to take out the tool marks:



Then various techniques for paring, scraping and chiselling along the grain. The hollows are the easy bit:





Finally, that piece was to shape:



I took a little interlude kto quickly mock up a joint I've not done before. I guess you could call it a half-housed halving joint. I made it in some awful softwood, but it told me what I needed to know:





I then set about doing the same thing for real:











I could use a router plane for this, as the faces were flat:



Having made that piece, I slid it down over the other half of the joint-to-be, and could mark the thickness of the narrower centre:







Again, there's my image limit........

 

[Mike G]

There were two lots of these to do:





Right. On to the legs. Straight forward mortice and tenons. Ten or 15 minutes each, normally. As all the scantlings varied a little in dimensions, I carefully marked them all out so that each joint could be made individually, and not mixed up:



As you can see, though, the legs were entirely unfiinished, and there isn't a reliable straight line anywhere:



This was going to make marking out accurately on opposite faces for through-mortices an absolute nightmare. I thought of a number of possibilities, but in the end, the only practical way was to work from a centre line. Even that wasn't straight forward, because where on earth was the centre?

I had drilled a hole in the template, on a centreline, and had marked the hole on the legs. This turned out to be my salvation as it meant I could reliably relocate the template, and transfer the centreline marks at each end:







My only flat square was a roofing square, but it's accurate, so it did the job fine. Lining it accurately to the centreline and marking with a knife, then transfering that around the work and doing it again on the other side, with a centreline you could only do your best to place accurately, was a recipe for an accumulation of small errors.





To set the width without using a mortice gauge, from a centreline, I could only think to use dividers. Then, you've got to join the dots using a knife along the grain along a straight-edge. Again, think of the opportunity that provides to make errors:





These aren't straight-through nmortices. They're angled:




It took far, far longer to mark out the mortices than to chop them out!:





Sneaking up on the lines:






Phew, that was close!!!

I can't tell you how please I was when I tapped the tenon through, and turned it over to find this:





I managed three:



Image limit again.......

 

[Mike G]

It took me hours because of the lack of a reference edge, but all the joints were as good as the first.



I just had to put the top in place for a first look at the overall effect:

 

[NickM]

Looking good

 

[Dr.Al]

Looks great.

I reckon I could do all that in a day easily.... as long as it was the length of a day on Mercury.

 

[MattS]

Always amazed by your speed and quality of work. Those angled mortise and tenons are very inpressive.

I’ve seen the unfinished underside on lots of bits of furniture, backs of drawers too. As you say underside of tables often have adze marks. What I’ve never really thought about is why they would have used an adze when they would have access to all the same tools you have?

 

[Mike G]

An adze would have been used earlier in the process than was available to me. I started with (band) sawn boards, rather than having to hew them from a trunk, or rive them from a stave, or dress roughly pit-sawn planks.

 

[NickM]

Always amazed by your speed and quality of work. Those angled mortise and tenons are very inpressive.

I’ve seen the unfinished underside on lots of bits of furniture, backs of drawers too. As you say underside of tables often have adze marks. What I’ve never really thought about is why they would have used an adze when they would have access to all the same tools you have?

Might they be marks from a heavily cambered plane blade (e.g. scrub plane) rather than an adze?

 

[Lurker]

Great WIP!
Lots of informative details.
Your work rate always makes me feel quite inadequate.

 

[Mike G]

Might they be marks from a heavily cambered plane blade (e.g. scrub plane) rather than an adze?

They're relatively easy to tell apart, Nick, as the scrub plane removes grooves and so tends to leave stripes across the work, whereas the adze makes individual scollops (scallops?). The adze can also leave edge marks, like curved cuts.

 

[Weekend_Woodworker]

Thanks for the WIP. Fascinating to see and learn from.

 

[Mike G]

I started by doing the final leg mortice, and that went well. I then shaped the ends of the tusk tenon, after referring back on here to the photos of the table I am notionally copying. All shaping starts with a piece of cornflakes packet:





I don't use sandpaper, really, and definitely not on this build, but rasps seemed like the only sensible way to finish the curved shape of the tusk tenon ends:





Dreadful photo, but I moved to the bridle joints at the top of each leg. Again, setting out from the centrelinemeant a two minute job took 5, but the joints all turned out well:











I nearly house-out for these joints, but luckily, in a moment of insight, I realised that if I did that the table would be unassemble-able. Comprehensive cock-up averted!

The pegs holding the legs to the stretchers have bothered me from the beginning. I don't like round pegs in place of wedges. Not only do they look wrong, but there is no wedging-effect to pull the joint up tight. The original has pegs just for show, I've decided. Anyway, I persuaded myself to stick with the design, but I determined to angle the hole, and flatten off the back of the peg on one side of the tenon, to created a wedging effect. The key is a sloped hole:









I could finally assemble all of the frame:





It's relatively square-ish:



I took it inside to the flattest surface we have; the kitchen worktop, and wedged and propped it to enable me to mark the feet for trimming:



The Lego bricks were critical to the procedure, and there are internet points for those of you still awake if you can guess their role.

The final job was to fit the non-dovetailed cross-member to the underside of the table top. It just felt easier to spoke-shave the edge of this piece rather than flatten an area of the table-top:



To be continued.......

 

[Mike G]

A few minutes of wrestling that tight halving joint together and apart 4 or 5 times, interspersed with more marking and shaving, and it soon fitted well enough:



Oh, and note the ghastly area of damage caused by errant rip-sawing a couple of days ago. It stays like that for perpetuity, hidden under the table top and behind a leg. I could now re-assemble the frame, but this time on the table top, which means the joinery is complete:





There's quite a lot of work still to do, particularly the chamfers to the table top edge, the pegs, and hours and hours of smoothing, and attending to arrises. Then it will be stained and finished next week.

In situ:



I can't say I'm a huge fan, but it's OK. It might have benefitted from a little extra splay, and I really don't like the detail on the end of the feet. I cut most of that away in doing the trimming to level, but it still looks odd to me.

 

[duke]

The table looks great Mike, amazing WIP. I have learned a lot from it. Maybe one day I'll tackle a only hand tool build.
Are you applying the usual Mike's BLO finish?

 

[Pete Maddex]

What can I say Mike, master class as usual.

Pete

 

[Mike G]

The table looks great Mike, amazing WIP. I have learned a lot from it. Maybe one day I'll tackle a only hand tool build.
Are you applying the usual Mike's BLO finish?

Thanks Duke.

I'm not sure on the finish, yet. My wife would like it dark, even black. I don't really want to ebonise it, but I might see if van Dyck's crystals bring it to a deep enough colour......but yeah, it's a rare piece which doesn't get multiple coats of oil/ varnish/ white spirit mix.

 

[duke]

Say you use a transparent stain even ebony you will get some of the grain showing through. But you already know this. At least you have scraps for testing finishes.

 

[Mike G]

I've a big decision to make on the edge detail, as the original has quite a bold chamfer on top and bottom edges which looks..........odd..........to me. I'm not sure why it looks odd, but I'll give it a try, I think, and if I don't like it in reality, I'll round them over.

 

[Windows]

I think it’s looking really good and I always appreciate the details of your write ups.

Regarding your feelings about the feet: on the original, the feet are almost as wide as the widest part of the leg and certainly seem wider than the thinnest part of the leg. The feet on your version appear thinner than the thin part of the leg. This gives a different feel to the grounding. Maybe you’re reacting to that difference.

 

[duke]

Looking back at Andy's image of this table I agree the top chamfer is is too large. Maybe a 1/4" one would look better, just a thought. Or as you say a low profile round over.