I 'started' building this coffee table in mid 2017 - worked on it a little bit on and off until recently when I was able to dedicate several hours over a week to complete it.
A little bit of background - I really enjoy the mid century modern aesthetic, and some of my influences are Wagner and Eames. I played around with the design for this table for a long time, finally settling on the 'box' design of coffee table. I've seen this various editions of this 'class' of table throughout the years, and almost all of them looked a bit off to me - mostly due to the proportions of the box itself, or the box to the door, or the box to the base height/width etc. I decided to try and make my own version, and keep in mind the proportions of the various elements in relation to each other.
At the outset I decided I would do this neander-only (no power tools). By the end of the project I regretted this decision, and used power tools to mill the stock for the divider panel and back, so it ended up being an around 90% hand tool build. In the future I will not be setting arbitrary constraints on myself and will just go with what's easier (ripping, resawing and milling rough stock by hand is just no fun).
The materials used were Walnut, some exquisite quilted maple, and a little bit of brass.
Here's my final design sketch (when I say final, I mean I changed some more designs as I went):
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And so it begins:
I dressed one face and one edge of the boards to let me glue the panels for the box up before dressing them again after glue up. Needless to say these stages took a while.
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