Oh what momentum, a second table finished in a five day period, this is a boonful harbinger, yes boonful I say, for the coming year.

The top is of Padauk, (wood database, wiki), just a gorgeous wood both to look upon and with which to work.  The legs and bracing are cut from a single piece of black oak, which of course is in the red oak family.

There are many non-fatal flaws of imprecision in this piece.  The lower twixt legs cross beams are doweled to the legs (no error there) and likewise there are high twixt leg crossbeams, intending to be flush to the table bottom but in one case not succeeding.

The tops of the legs are rectangular and divided into two squares, one (one the side of the leg perpendicular to the table bottom) protruding half an inch higher than the other.  A corresponding shallow blind mortise is notched into the table bottom.  During assembly the table fop was set upside down and said cavities were filled with T-88 structural epoxy.  The legs were set into these, the high cross beams doweled at angle into the table top, and the overhanging second (square) portions of the rectangle (meant to be but not always flush to the tabletop) also doweled at angle into the tabletop.  Those joints should be of more than sufficient strength.

The legs and superstructure where sanded to 80 grit with all corners softened.   The tabletop to 220 grit.  Tung oil and limonene will finish all surfaces… food safe!  As an aside, this is my knee-jerk go to finish.  If anyone wants fancier, please, at your leisure proceed.

In that second photo note the chair at bottom right and the red vise top right of center.  Both formerly of my great grandfather, Walter, born 1885 and passed in 1974.  I remember visiting the last house he lived in and finding a wooden model of an airplane in his attic.  It occurred to me today that he would have been well a grown man before airplanes entered the mass consciousness.

Anyway, thank you kind readers

Greetings to you all, the imagined motley horde that delights in all this narrative of experience, the pain, the beauty, the wisdom, the delicious nuance and plaintive sharing.  Today I have good news, though it will be broken into two segments, one per table, for today I have completed the second of two tables, tables that were for far too long in neglectful and partial states of completion.

This is a white oak (quartersawn) end table, suitable for a lamp and a book adjacent to an armchair or a couch.

The only noteworthy error is that the plane describe by the shelf is not perfectly parallel to the plane described by the surface of the table.  It is a small divergence, but yet a small divergence projected over a sufficient distance will certainly be observed – for example, the astronauts who calculate that they missed the moon by only 0.0000131 of a degree, which unfortunately translates into 1147 miles and a cold trip to eternity.  Thankfully no lives here depend on sufficient correctness.  I just would seem conscienceless not to report the discrepancy.  I consulted with two domestic authorities who assured me that the error did not matter.

Otherwise it’s basically very nice, click to see the nice quartersawn figure.  This table is an overdue gift for my mother.  It was inspired by her having purchased 3 imported end tables of low price and quality.  I’m no fan of the blithering CarrotTop but at the same time I have never been able to understand why it is not important to be able to deliver quality domestically at a decent price, especially when (as not at this moment) there’s not full employment.  So in a way this is a protest table.  Turn off the television, skill up, make things, make good things, make your time on the planet useful.  (This is a public service message)

Thank you all as always