Bent Laminated End Table
I work pretty closely with my boss, Doug Hicks. We share an interest in woodworking and digital photography. Each of us spends a lot of weekends in the shop working on projects for our homes. Recently, Doug mentioned he was going to build an end table using bent laminate legs. I asked him where he’d found plans and he explained that he had drawn up his own.
Now, I know Doug, and although he’s built hundreds of great woodworking projects, I know he’s not too handy with computers. So I asked him if he’d used a CAD program to draw them. (And wondered to myself how he’d figured out how to use it.) That’s when he told me he had used a low-tech method to design the table — a sketch on a scrap of paper and some cardboard!
Over the next few weeks, Doug is going to send images of his work to me and explain to us all how he solved some of the problems in building the table as he goes along. You’ll have to excuse a few of the photos though. Doug hasn’t purchased a tripod yet for his camera, so a few of the images are a bit out of focus and skewed to the left or right. (Especially the ones where he shows his hands in the photo while he’s taking the picture.) I hope you learn a little and enjoy this first WoodworkingONLINE construction article.
– Joel
Fulfilling a Need
One of our favorite spots to sit in our new house is in a couple of 
chairs that swivel completely around so we can look out on our backyard. We like watching the birds at the feeder, squirrels chasing each other around the yard, and the change of seasons. But there’s nowhere to set a cup of coffee, a cool glass of lemonade, or the morning paper, see Fig. 1 at right. So, my wife Cathy and I decided we needed an end table between the chairs.
I’ve built some other cherry furniture and one of the distinguishing features in all of these pieces is the gentle curves. The dining table (Fig. 1a) and coffee table (Fig. 1b) are made using a bent lamination technique. And on the sofa table (Fig. 1c), I cut the two opposing curved pieces out of wide cherry boards. Most of the rest of the furniture I have built follows a Shaker style and though these curved pieces are more modern, they seem to be simple enough in design that they all work together well. (Not to mention that Cathy loves the look of cherry.)
Figure 1a
Figure 1c
DESIGN
I’m pretty good when it comes to designing and drawing in two dimensions. But when it comes to drawing or thinking in three dimensions, my mind usually starts spinning. (Which explains why the few times I’ve tried woodcarving have been hopeless failures.) So when I work on a complicated three dimensional piece, I usually start with a few measurements, maybe make a prototype, and then just “go for it” adjusting things as I go. That’s what I did here.
I started off sitting in the chairs with Cathy (with a yardstick in hand) and we began talking about how high the table should be. She wanted it a little lower, I wanted it a little higher. We compromised on 22”. Then we measured the distance between the chairs and figured the top should be somewhere between 19” and 23” in diameter. Given those dimensions, I quickly sketched out the “plan” on a 3” x 3” piece of scrap paper, see Fig. 2 at right. I sort of had a vision of the arch for the legs that would be similar to the dining table (shown above), but that scrap of paper was all I ever worked from on this project.
Cardboard Prototype
I started by building a prototype out of cardboard, see Fig. 3. My new General International table saw came in a very stout box and the thick corrugated cardboard was perfect for the prototype. Though it wasn’t as thick as wood, it quickly gave me a sense of the design and the size. I cut out all of the cardboard pieces on my band saw, stacking the legs up all on top of each other and cutting them at the same time. And for the top I used my band saw circle-cutting jig.
Figure 3
Once all five pieces were cut to shape, I glued the legs together with hot melt glue gun glue, Figs. 4 and 5. It was surprisingly strong. At one point I almost went with three legs, but kept coming back to four. It seemed like it would be easier to assemble them together later. (At this point I had no idea how to fasten the legs together, but something told me that if I used four legs it would be easier than three!) I’ve always wondered since then what it would have looked like with three legs?
Figure 4
Figure 5
Cathy and I couldn’t seem to agree on the diameter of the top. She wanted a bigger (23”) top and I wanted a smaller (19”) one. This is why making a cardboard prototype is great. I made a big one and a little one and we had them both sitting on the legs for a day or so. We decided again to compromise at 21”. (But what I never did tell her was that I chipped out the edge of the top on the real table when I was making it and to get a clean edge it probably ended up closer to 20”!)
– Doug
Continued on Wednesday, July 19th.
Jon Hughes said,
Doug/ Joel,
Thanks for the article. I have anxiously been waiting for this series of articles since Doug brought these tables into his last seminar.
I am not yet ready to take on a project like this, but would like to attempt something like this in the future. Is there any way, once all of the articles have been completed, that I could get a downloadable version to keep as a reference?
Do you know yet what the Fall line-up is going to be for Thursday night seminars?
Look forward to seeing you in the Fall,
Jon
(posted on July 18th, 2006 at 7:45 am)