End Tables

So here is the exact pictures from the magazine that Karen showed me that she wanted. You'll see it's not that great of a picture, but it gave me enough to deisgn the rest based on what she wanted them to look like style wise and them for me to add my own twists to it. Karen also wanted them to have sides so they could double as storage for extra stuff we have.

Price and dimentions from ptrybrn are shown here:

So after seeing the pictures above, I made some plans in my head and put them on paper.





So I wanted to make something of SUPER quality. Something HUGE and DURABLE. Something STRONG and LONGLASTING. So I made the meat of this project with not only solid red oak, but THICK red oak. Red oak is rather expensive. So to buy think pieces, it's even more. So I bought normal pieces and glued them two thick.

I also wanted to finally use my mortiser. I've had this machine in my shop for well over a year now and have never used it. I just never had a need because I used other types of joinery to make my other projects. But the strongest joint is by far, a mortise and tennon. Here, you'll see I made a mortise (square hole).

So the question most non-woodworkers will ask is, how in the world do you make a square hole? The answer--with the mortiser, of course. A mortiser is basically a drill press with a bit that spins like normal, and a special casing that does NOT spin but is basically a square chisel.

This picture above shows a through mortise; a mortise that goes all the way through the wood. However, there's also a mortise that can be made that does not go through the wood. In this case, the left and right sides of the end tables were through mortises while the fronts and backs were not through mortises.

Here's a picture of the through mortise with a non through mortise.

Here's the bottom of the end tables on the right hand side of the table. Again--this is a through mortise that goes through to the front and back of the end tables. You'll also see in the background, a picture of the top piece I already cut (tennon; that goes through the larger mortise on the top of the right legs).

And here's a picture of the basic frame of the end tables. This frame in and of itself is SUPER strong--even with no wood glue! SOLID.

But then I wanted to run some dado cuts through the sides of the legs and the top and bottom parts that also have the tennons, so they could fit a piece of oak ply in there. That may not have made sense, but here's some pictures to help explain.

You see, I wanted the sides to be held in by the the wood that surrounded them on all four sides. To do that, I had to make this dado cut in the bottom, another on the top, and one on each leg that this side panel touched. Same with the back and then the other side of the end table. Here's the dado cut in one of the 8 total legs (this is, by the way, how I cut my finger; making one of these cuts).

Here's a shot of the through tennon on the bottom and the dados on the bottom and in the leg. Remember, that bottom piece is really two pieces of wood glued together to make it 1 and a 1/2 inches square.

Again we can see how the panel will slide into the bottom . . .

And here it is almost slid in to the side also. Add some glue and you have one STURDY piece of furniture!!!

So I wanted to also add some champhers on this piece. The through mortises and tennons were something I not only wanted to learn, but ended up doing EXTENSIVELY on this project, but I also wanted to have champhers. A champher is just a 45 degree angle on edges. I wanted to put them on the through tennons AND the outside faces of each of the 8 legs. Here's what the router bit looks like that makes this cut. This could have also been done on a table saw--but with not as nice of results I feel.

Here's a close up shot of what shape that bit makes.

Here's another shot but now you can see the whole piece.

For the drawers, I stuck with the standard. On the far side you have the actual rails (with through tennons discussed above; and now with dadoes to receive the side/back panels). Next to the "rail" you have what's called upper and lower doublers; they prevent the drawer from sliding from side to side (left to right) and dinging up the rail from the inside. The bottom piece you see on the bottom doubler is called a runner (because the drawer runs in and out on). Generally you also have a kicker on the upper doubler to prevent the drawer from falling down when you pull it out, but I decided to use the underside of the table TOP as MY kicker and let me tell you what--it KICKS BUTT!!! Here's a GREAT article I used to help me learn how to design a good drawer

Here's a picture of what MINE turned out as.

Here you can see how the drawer rests on the runner, and the doublers prevent it from sliding left and right.

Now I needed to make some SUPER small mortises for the hinges to sit in on each leg. To do that, I needed them to be PERFECTLY aligned with each other. Here's a shot of before I hand chiseled out a shallow mortise

Here's a shot of a 1 and a 1/2 inch spacer block I used to ensure they were spaced evenly from the top and bottom--note the champhered tennon!

Then I used this dowling marker to make a small dent in the wood so my drill bit wouldn't drift away from the DEAD center area they needed to drill into (since I don't have a drill press and even if I DID, it was too late to use seeing I glued up the pieces by this point.

For the tops, I was going to just glue them to the rails/legs, but then ended up buying these figure 8 washers and drilling them into four courners of each end table AND gluing them on--double the strength!!!!!!!!! I used my nifty ebay bought forstner bit set!


So here they finally are!!!! After two coats of gell stain (I could have gotten away with just one coat, but it was my first time trying gel stain) and two coats of oil based polyurethane (the tops got 4 coats), these are some dnag SPANKY pieces of furniture!!!!

If there's ever an earthquake, we'll huddle next to these bad boys. They are litereally indestrctable. I'd wager you could put well over 2 tons of weight on each one without any problems. Too bad they'll only see cups and a lamp. Here's the 23 or so inches of cabinet space for old VHS tapes and other storage purposes.

a full 18 inches of drawer space.

Nice hardware picks by Karen!!!

There's another matching end table but the lighting stinks.