End Table For Zack

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I made an End Table for Zack for Xmass since he was using one of my stools as a lampstand in his Apt. I came up with a rather unconvensional End Table design, since I wanted space underneath to store books or magazines. Here are two sides with the templates attached for a scroll saw design provided by Enrique.

Here I am cutting out the design in one of the four side panels. I tried to position the design so it would not be occluded by the top, and would still allow the work piece to be rotated within the throat length of my scrollsaw.

The basic design is two open side boxes joined at the base. The bottom shelf support and the top stabilize the upper portion of the two open boxes. Rocker Clamp-it jigs were used to keep the boxes square during assembly. Notice that square recesses were made for the screws holding the bottom shelf.

I let Zack pick the stain color, then had him apply it to the bottom shelf and the top. Nice weather let him do it outside!

Here's the finished product stained and assembled. I really like the mirrored scroll saw design in the sides!

Texas Star Table Inlay

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My daughter wanted a Texas star table for Christmas. I had a round oak table that needed refinishing, so I decided to inlay the star while refinishing the table top. I started out by constructing a regular pentagon using a trammel point compass and a bit of basic geometry. After laying out the star I used my router and a straight edge to remove area inside down to a depth of 3/16 inches. The trick is to remove material along an edge and work across the star point to ensure the router base has a stable surface to ride on.

After finishing the routing I re-sawed basswood into 3/16 inch thick stock to create 10 half star points. These were sanded to fit inside lines drawn from the center to the points on the perimeter between the star legs.

After sanding the basswood pieces to fit within each star point and numbering their orientation, transtint dye was used to color them.

Next I mixed marine epoxy and placed it into the bottom of the routed star recess. The dyed basswood pieces were placed in their respective places and held in place with lead weights while the epoxy cured. Afterwards another batch of epoxy was mixed to fill the slight depression between the basswood inserts and the rest of the table top. This also filled in any gaps along the edges and between the star point sections.

After the last batch of the epoxy cured, and was sanded to remove the amine blush and make sure the surface was level, polyurethane was applied.

Here is the table top after 8 coats of polyurethane. I used a clear gloss polyurethane to reduce amount of yellowing produced by each successive coat. I used a satin polyurethane for the top two coats.