Totaly Neander...

[David Gendron]

Good day creekers, an other neander project done... Almost, I still have to put a coat of wax!

I post it here because last time, when I posted it on the project tread, some one said I should post it here so...

Any coment wellcome.
The dove tails are not perfect( my first drawers).
The legs are straight, the wood is giving the elusion that they are bowed.
So the wood is Black Walnut ant the top is Birds eye maple!

There is a few "mistakes" or should I say things i would do differently, but this is a learning peice... I'm self tought!

[Bill Houghton]

I'm self t[a]ught!

You've got a good teacher.

Beautiful piece of work. I like the way the grain swirls right at the drawer pulls.

[harry strasil]

+1 for a good teacher, and also a good learning job. Ya can't beat OJT in your own shop.

[Jim Koepke]

Beautiful!

There are no mistakes, they are learning experiences.

BTW, perfect dovetails are for machines. We can all find the many mistakes in our work, others seldom find them.

My recollection is that Japanese artist felt only God was capable of perfection, so they strived for near perfection.

jim

[dan grant]

man i like that, dont know why, just a table with two drawers but i sure like it http://www.sawmillcreek.org/images/icons/icon14.gif

[gary Zimmel]

Great job David!
Can't beat the satisfaction of doing things neander.

[John Keeton]

David, that is exceptional! Great job on the dovetails, and the style is perfect. What is the finish? I noticed in the other thread in Projects you talked about putting on a coat of wax, but it sure looks nice as is.

[george wilson]

Very nice work,David. But,you are doing exactly the same thing I used to do: I made my legs too thin. I suggest keeping them a little thicker,else they could be broken easily if anything hit them. I have done the same,though,in the 70's I got a bit extreme in some designs.

You do have a good eye for design.

[Joe Cunningham]

Nice! How'd you taper the legs? On my (mostly) neander Shaker-esque table, I 'cheated' and used a bandsaw, then cleaned 'em up with a hand plane. Then painted them to hide the ugly doug fir (he he).

Love that top, that is some fine looking maple.

[Dave Anderson NH]

Nicely done David. As a point of reference, EVERY piece is a learning piece. The day I stop learning is the day I'll hang it up.

[Roy Wall]

Looks terrific David........ love the height of the drawers and the grain match....nice DT's........

and I echo Dave Anderson's thoughts.....

[David Keller NC]

Nice work, David. Maybe you can use that new panel raiser for beveling the top on the next one.

Couple of design comments - you've already picked up on the wood grain the legs and how it affects the overall look of the piece. One way around that, if you so choose, is to use "rift-sawn" wood for legs. You either pick a piece of lumber at the yard that has the growth rings oriented 45 degrees to both faces, or you cut it that way out of a larger piece of stock. Doing that makes the grain lines follow the form of the leg, both for straight, tapered, or cabriole forms. It also makes the grain appearance uniform from all 4 sides of the leg.

You might also choose to use contrasting pulls - for example, you could have used the maple used for the top. This is also a very common attribute of both modern and classic designs.

For a new piece, you might consider graduating the drawers and making the drawer blades a bit thinner. Though there are certainly exceptions on small pieces with less than 3 drawers, most case furniture has a shorter drawer on the top, then a slightly taller one, then the tallest in the bottom. There's a pretty good article by George Walker in the latest (June) edition of Popular Woodworking. In addition to showing examples, he has a neat way of determining the graduation and dimensions with just a pair of dividers - no measuring.

That issue, by the way, is the best one I've seen in any woodworking magazine in the last 3 years, particularly for hand tool workers.

Nice table!

[Paul Murphy]

I like the bevel on the underside of the top, it really seems to fit the piece. Outstanding results for your drawer dovetail. I can't get over how well done they are.

[David Gendron]

John K., As for the finish, I used Tried & True Oil Varnish, 5 coats on the top, and 3 on the rest. I realy like that stuff!

Joe, to shape the leg, after laying out the shape, I use a draw knife and go at it until I get as close as I dare to the layout lines, after that I use my #6 and finished with the #8 and if I need to, I would do a few passes with the smooth plane. I eased the edges and that's it!

George W., I know that the legs seems a litle small but we will see with time the wood grain is nice and long...

David K, I actualy did cut my legs stock with the grain runing at 45 degrees and after removing some material, the grain looked like it looke now so ??
As for the drawer pull, I try different wood and found that if I wanted the attention on the wavy grain pattern on the drawer I decided to put the pulls in the same wood.
Drawer blades??
And I agree on the june issue of pop wood magazine!

Thank you all verry much for all your suggestions and comments, I realy appreciated it!
It's now time to move on to an other project!
David

[george wilson]

I made a very nice little Queen Anne table in the 70's,but got too carried away with slenderness on the legs. I hope they never got broken while moving,or something. It was a gift,so I do not know its fate.

I remember that Tried and True varnish got a poor rating in some FWW test some years ago,for whatever it's worth. I can't remember its problem by now. This is not to criticize,just to warn you about it.

[Seth Poorman]

David
Well done,you did a good job,well proportioned.......

[Stephen Edwards]

That's a fine looking piece of furniture! Nice design and very good execution. You can be proud of that piece for years to come. Thanks for sharing.

[David Gendron]

George, I realy appreciat the warning on the Tried & True, An will ask around what people think or have experienced with it! Also regarding the legs, are Queen Anne legs not cabriol legs? Would it make a difference?

[Mark Versprille]

Holy Cow!! That is good! Mr. Wilson may be correct about durability of the delicate proportions of the legs , but it sure looks right. I would be so proud to make a piece that beautiful.:cool:

[Louis Bois]

David, you did an excellent job on this delicate table! You certainly didn't pick the easiest woods to work with for hand tools:eek:, but walnut and maple sure work well together, don't they?

Well done!

[David Keller NC]

David - I can't explain how the leg's grain ended up the way they did if the grain in the rough outs was rift-sawn. The only way I can see that happening is if the grain rose on one end of the board, then descended on the other. That typically happens when the tree has a slight bend in it, and the saw at the mill "straightens it out". Those boards typically have a "bullseye" pattern somewhere in the middle.


"Also regarding the legs, are Queen Anne legs not cabriol legs?

David - "Queen Anne" legs were usually cabriole legs on chairs, highboys and lowboys. Chest and heavy case furniture typically got "bracket feet".

But not all cabriole legs would be Queen Anne legs - the style carried over to Chippendale, and has been resurrected multiple times on more modern styles. You can still see bastardized cabriole legs on "traditional" mass-produced furniture like Ethan Allen. Those legs are really ugly because they're attentuated and made to fit the minimum stock size and be made by machine, but they're cabriole legs nonetheless.

[harry strasil]

I tend to agree with George, I happen to like Shaker Style and I particuly like the shaker tapered legs, I don't particuly care for turned legs, but rather like their tapered on the inside square legs. My personal rule of thumb is, I never taper the legs more than 1/3 of the original thickness. FWIW


My one exception to my rule was when I made the base for this sewing cabinet I made for my first wife to use while I was demoing Woodworking at Living History and Steam Shows. And there is no metal (screws or nails) use in its construction.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/sewingbox.jpg

[David Keller NC]

David - Forgot to answer the "drawer blades"? question. A drawer blade is another word for a drawer divider - its the piece of wood that goes between each of the front legs to hold the drawer in the case. Generally, these are mortised into the front legs, or on a piece of case furniture, dovetailed into the case sides for the first couple of inches.

On most classically-designed furniture, the drawer blades are no thicker than 1/5th of the height of the smallest drawer, though there are some exceptions.

[David Gendron]

Thank you again David K., I will remember that for the next one(1/5 of the smallest drawer!) As for the blades on this project, I used stoped sliding dovetails to the front legs! Like i said this piece was to try as much joint as possible!!
David.

[David Keller NC]

David - Remember that the 1/5th proportion is just a rule of thumb - on a particularly small piece, following that rule of thumb to the letter could result in a drawer blade that's too thin and flexes too much.

Using stopped sliding dovetails in the front legs would definitely be an unusual construction method (most pieces with longer legs have M&T joints connecting the blade to the leg), but there's certainly no reason why it won't work and be very sturdy. It's essentially the same grain orientation as found on early case pieces, where the drawer blade was connected to the case side with either a dovetail or a housed dovetail.

Interestingly, the aesthetic of the period demanded that joinery by hidden, so a lot of these case pieces have a piece of applied double-bead molding covering up the dovetails.