Christmas Project Photos & BS assembled

[John Gossett]

Hello All!

I had a busy Christmas building my first non-plan table - a sofa table based off a picture from FWW gallery. Theirs was cherry, this was walnut - my first work with walnut. I have to say cutting walnut sure smells good! I finished all the work by New Years but couldn't get the figure-8 clips to put the top on until yesterday. It's finished with Watco & wax.

Today a coworker came over to help me assemble my Rikon 14" Delux Bandsaw. That was a heavy sucker. The instructions seemed to be a bit sparse in places but we figured it out anyway. I cut some test pieces (without doing any setup yet) and I was surprised at how easily it cut oak and pine 2x4s. I'm itching to give some resawing a try but I want to tune it up first.

John
Cedar Park

The lighting is not the best - it's been cloudy for days - not typical Texas weather...
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[Corey Hallagan]

Beautiful, the table has some really nice lines. I like it alot.

Corey

[Dan Oliphant]

Very nice piece John, walnut is indeed a pleasure to work with.

[Roy Wall]

John,

That is a beautifully crafted table.......terrific design!!!!!!

[John Michaels]

Wow! you did a wonderful job. As someone that is new to woodworking
I have found that coming up with ideas yourself is a monumental task.
The bubinga dresser I'm building is from plans off the net. Without them I'd be lost. I'd like to use walnut for a future sofa table also.

[Pete Harbin]

Beautiful table John! Nice job working from a photo.

Pete

[John Gossett]

Wow! you did a wonderful job. As someone that is new to woodworking I have found that coming up with ideas yourself is a monumental task.
Thanks to everyone for the complements - it was a fun job. I've always had "imagination" problems but working from the picture wasn't too bad. The more I build stuff the more I know how things go together (and learn to avoid the gotchas).

I pulled out a dusty sketch book from an art class years ago and started sketching ideas for other tables I'd like to build. I've tried using Turbocad and Sketchup but I always find myself frustrated at how slow those tools seem to me compared to how I can quickly rough up a sketch with paper, pencil, ruler, and eraser. While working on the sofa table I always had sketching supplies around and if there was a joint I wasn't sure of I would quickly sketch it out a few different ideas until I found the one that worked with what I had in mind. (Now I've gone off into the design forum ...)

I enjoy the manual sketching so much that I'm thinking of buying or building a portable sketching table so I can re-learn the art of using a T-square (which I still have from college drafting class.)

John
Cedar Park, TX