This was another fun project: I designed the table myself, took several avenues that turned out to be dead-ends and combined it with blacksmithing. Long story short: I learned a lot about design and how to design things so that I can build them. [elaborate] The table is made from maple. It has five legs that are dovetailed into a ten-sided post. The post is glued together from 4 pieces of maple, with two 3/8 plywood splines per glue joint. The table top is 4’ 6” in diameter. It originally was 5’ in diameter, but this turned out to be too large. When my wife and I tested the size, we felt like whipping out our phones to talk to each other; it felt that big. The sad thing is that when I made is smaller, I had to cut out a circular inlay, made from Walnut, that was about 1 ½” from the edge.In the close-up, you will notice a black strip near the bottom of the center post. That is actually a steel ring that I forged and installed the old fashion way: by heating it up in the forge to a barely perceptible red and then placing it on the center post (and blowing on it and using a wet rag to ensure that it did not burn all of the wood.) It fits snugly. Incidentally, I turned that portion of the center post on the lathe. Since the center post is quite heavy, I was concerned that the lathe was going to hop off my table saw, however, I tightened it down well and I marked the centers well; it didn’t move at all.
Finish [elaborate]
