Sydney Blue Gum and Maple Hall Table
Mel (Wed AM TG) –
I wanted to make an elegant table with a bit of an Asian feel to it, for my entrance hallway. I roughed up the design, and then on the advice of my instructor I added a lens-shaped drawer. I used Sydney Blue Gum, with the exception of the sides of the drawer, which are of Maple for colour contrast. I found the Blue Gum fairly good to machine and to hand-plane, with a good tight and generally parallel grain. Where the grain went a bit twisty, I just avoided machining, and used scrapers instead. I joined the frame with mortise/tenons at the corners, reinforced by wedges, with hand-cut dovetails on the drawer and sliding dovetails to secure the drawer slides. The leg tapers were rough cut on the table saw and then hand-planed and scraped.
The drawer is very slender, just 35mm top-to-bottom, with a depth of 25mm. With the allowance for the plywood bottom, there is only one dovetail holding the back end together.
I found when finishing the table that the Danish oil caused the drawer slides to thicken slightly. So I had to carefully sand off the slides to release the drawer. I then waxed the slides.
I polished the table with Danish oil and finished off with wax.