This is a build thread for a federal style sideboard I plan to use as a bar, based on a Thomas Seymour original as described in Glen Huey’s excellent book “Building 18th-Century American Furniture”, which I highly recommend. Dimensions are roughly 46” long by 40” high by 24” deep.
The only significant change to the original design was to increase the height of the part of the carcass intended to hold bottles – apparently liquor bottles in the 1700s were 3 – 4 inches shorter than current examples. Primary woods are mahogany (Sapelle at my local lumberyard) and curly Maple with some ebony accents. Mahogany was a dream to work with hand tools as usual, and personally I find the figure on the curly Maple strikingly attractive, although it required very sharp, higher frog angle planes to avoid tear out.
First step was glue up, dimensioning and surfacing mahogany carcass sides. To lay out the tennons that will join the carcass sides of the legs I like to use a story stick for consistency.
Shop made rabbit plane creates Tennon shoulders.
Next was tapered legs. I made a poster board template of the taper. Key learning for me was reference placement of the template and layout against centerlines of the legs, rather than surfaces. Because I work primarily with hand tools, rough dimensions of table legs earn not entirely consistent, but if you reference off the centerline that doesn’t matter.