First Project - All Hand Tool

[Jeff Myer]

Well this is my first real project hand tool or otherwise. Overall I am pretty happy with it even with all the flaws. I learned a lot that will translate well to my next project. The stretchers are mortise and tenon into the legs and the top is held on with screws through small blocks with elongated holes for movement.

Most importantly though, this serves a previous un-met need to hold my water pic in our bathroom with no counters.

I do have in process pics as well if anyone is interested although I doubt many could learn much from my process.


http://myermountain.com/images/Table/tbltop.jpg

http://myermountain.com/images/Table/tblfrnt.jpg

[Steve Pirrelli]

I'm curious about how you tapered the legs by hand?

[Steve Pirrelli]

Oops, forgot to mention, great looking stand, love the figuref wood on top.:)

[Jeff Myer]

I'm curious about how you tapered the legs by hand?

This was actually an afterthought. I had ripped the legs by hand from rough stock and planed them square. A friend of mine that is an excellent woodworker recommended that I taper the legs suggesting the table saw.

Being determined that this was going to be 100% hand tool, I laid out the taper with a pencil line and used my scrub plane to get close then a #5 to finish up. To be honest, it went super fast and the results were pretty good. I don't think I could have done it as quick on the table saw. If the legs were made of something with less cooperative grain it may be a different story.

BTW thanks for the compliment.

[Steve Pirrelli]

Thanks for the quick response. Sounds like you learned a lot with this project. I gotta get me a scrub plane, got plenty of smoothers. :)

[Bill Houghton]

I'm amazed at the smoothness of the top - not easy to do, and for a first hand tool project, really admirable.

I'm curious - you say, "I learned a lot..."

That's been my experience, for sure. What kinds of things did you learn?

Are you interested in design comments?

[Jeff Myer]

I'm curious - you say, "I learned a lot..."

That's been my experience, for sure. What kinds of things did you learn?


Well... where to start. Here's a free form brainstorm in no particular order:

A scrub plane is worth its weight in gold when working with rough sawn stock. Had I bothered to sharpen mine from the start I would have saved a lot of time overall.

Fir is very soft and trying to lever out waste from mortises is not a great idea unless you stay away from the end of the mortise until the very end.

Keep track of reference edges/faces well.

Don't scrimp on materials, methods or design because by the time your done you will have so much time invested you will be disappointed in the sacrifices you made to save a small amount of time/money.

Sanding is for the birds. (and in some cases may degrade to look of a well planed surface)

Pine & Fir ding up easily.



Are you interested in design comments?

Sure.. I am more than open to any comments.... this reminds me of something else I learned and that is that it may well be better to have more of a plan together before starting to work. This design was more of a stream of conscience work than a pre-meditated design.

[Bill Houghton]

Fir is very soft and trying to lever out waste from mortises is not a great idea unless you stay away from the end of the mortise until the very end.

I suspect this is at least part of the reason that, traditionally, wood entry doors were made with "horns," extended stiles that brought the mortise away from the end some. Seems to me I've seen references to that in furniture making too. You then cut off the excess.

You were very clearly paying attention to what was going on, and thinking about what you could do better - that's great.


Sure.. I am more than open to any comments.... this reminds me of something else I learned and that is that it may well be better to have more of a plan together before starting to work. This design was more of a stream of conscience work than a pre-meditated design.

I'm not sure if the appearance of the taper being on the outside is a perspective issue or if your legs do taper in. On a tall, thin table like this, I think tapers should be on the inside, with the outside faces being vertical - otherwise, the table can look unstable.

I do like your use of two woods in this table. Sometimes work made of all one wood can be kind of bland, and, if you'd gone crazy and used curly maple everywhere, it would have been, in my opinion, bizarre. Fir is a neat wood, but flat grain isn't always the most attractive. Vertical grain fir - more expensive, for sure, and could be hard to track down (check with lumberyards that serve contractors) - might have been a better match to the lovely maple top.

Mind, the table is terrific - this isn't a criticism, intended more as a critique.

Design on the fly can be very freeing, and bring about interesting stuff. Ask any jazz musician. Design ahead of time can develop ideas very effectively, as any classical musician will tell you. There's a place for both. Mistakes made during the execution of thought-out designs are, of course, a combination of the two.

[Alan DuBoff]

Well this is my first real project hand tool or otherwise.
Foul! Foul! Foul!

Your gonna have to sit in the penalty box for a couple months for creating such a beautiful project! :p

That is gorgeous! Nice selection of wood! :)

[David Keller NC]

Jeff - From a design/materials standpoint, there's a couple of things that come to mind. Given its location (bathroom) where the usual course of use involves very large swings in humidity, you may have difficulties keeping the legs from bowing wildly. One way to counter this (for the next one) is to put a set of stretchers about a 1/3 of the way up from the floor. That can also be used as a design feature where you place a small shelf across the stretchers.

From the standpoint of the legs, you may want to choose the orientation of the grain in the rough stock so that the figure is consistent between the different legs. One way to do that is to either purchase "rift sawn" stock, or to orient the legs in the rough wood so that they'll be rift sawn when they're cut out. Rift sawn, by the way, refers to the grain's direction when viewed on the end as being 45 degrees to the faces. If you've oriented the blanks so that the grain lines intersect at two opposing corners, and you orient the legs in the table so that one of these corners is the outside one, then any curve/taper you cut into the leg will result in grain lines that follow the shape.

Really nice result, btw, and some really, really nice maple for the top. Near instrument grade (which is pretty costly - you did great if you got it at less than $20 a b.f.)

[Joe Cunningham]

Very nice result!

My first project (also all hand tool, though I got the stock as 4s4) was a chisel box and it looks a bit like beavers gnawed out the dovetails.

[Carlos Cabrera]

I am curious about the quote below, how would you do the joinery if you faced the tapers inside on the legs ??


I'm not sure if the appearance of the taper being on the outside is a perspective issue or if your legs do taper in. On a tall, thin table like this, I think tapers should be on the inside, with the outside faces being vertical - otherwise, the table can look unstable.





I suspect this is at least part of the reason that, traditionally, wood entry doors were made with "horns," extended stiles that brought the mortise away from the end some. Seems to me I've seen references to that in furniture making too. You then cut off the excess.

You were very clearly paying attention to what was going on, and thinking about what you could do better - that's great.



I'm not sure if the appearance of the taper being on the outside is a perspective issue or if your legs do taper in. On a tall, thin table like this, I think tapers should be on the inside, with the outside faces being vertical - otherwise, the table can look unstable.

I do like your use of two woods in this table. Sometimes work made of all one wood can be kind of bland, and, if you'd gone crazy and used curly maple everywhere, it would have been, in my opinion, bizarre. Fir is a neat wood, but flat grain isn't always the most attractive. Vertical grain fir - more expensive, for sure, and could be hard to track down (check with lumberyards that serve contractors) - might have been a better match to the lovely maple top.

Mind, the table is terrific - this isn't a criticism, intended more as a critique.

Design on the fly can be very freeing, and bring about interesting stuff. Ask any jazz musician. Design ahead of time can develop ideas very effectively, as any classical musician will tell you. There's a place for both. Mistakes made during the execution of thought-out designs are, of course, a combination of the two.

[Jeff Myer]

I'm not sure if the appearance of the taper being on the outside is a perspective issue or if your legs do taper in. On a tall, thin table like this, I think tapers should be on the inside, with the outside faces being vertical - otherwise, the table can look unstable.
The legs are tapered on the insides only...I think I better go check now to see if I tapered one leg incorrectly though.:eek:



Fir is a neat wood, but flat grain isn't always the most attractive.

This exemplifies my comment on things I learned regarding not taking any shortcuts on materials. The legs were scavenged from some old timbers I found in the basement of my house. This is one of the places that I wish that I had taken more time to plan and use a better material. In any case it is a good lesson to learn.


To all: Thanks for the encouraging comments. I had a great time making this and only wish that I had more than about 15-30 minutes a week to mess with wood.

[Phillip Pattee]

That top is quite striking. You know, SWMBO is going to steal your table and make a plant stand out of it.:D It will never stay in the bathroom.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Looks fantastic Jeff! The figure of the top is very striking. And if that's your first attempt then you are well on your way.

My only comment would be the proportion of height to width. Based on counting tiles it seems to be about 32" tall by about 8-12" wide? I would be concerned that this would be a little tippy, especially with something on top of it.

[gary Zimmel]

Great job Jeff!

Can't beat the feeling of doing things with hand tools.

[David Keller NC]

"I am curious about the quote below, how would you do the joinery if you faced the tapers inside on the legs ??"

Carlos - What one typically does is to taper the legs from the bottom of the apron down. There are a lot of techniques for starting a taper 6 or 7 inches down the leg and continuing to the end: "Interrupted" cut on a powered jointer, a table-saw jig, a bandsaw, or in the case of handtools, a rip saw and a plane.

From the hand-tool perspective, one of the better ways to do this is to select a rift-sawn leg stock board that's a bit over twice the width you need for a leg, then rip the board at an angle so that you get two legs with the appropriate taper, then you simply clean up the saw marks with a hand plane, a spokeshave, or a scraper.

[Carlos Cabrera]

David, I really dont know what i was thinking when i asked that question :)

Thanks for the explanation anyway !!

Carlos