With a few workshop-related projects under my belt, I was ready for the challenge of a small furniture project to test my skills and the limitations of my workspace. Thinking over my options, I decided upon a small table with mortise and tenon joinery, and a drawer with half-blind dovetails, both of which were relatively new to me but which I felt confident trying. Maybe some tapered legs, I thought... why this is sounding something like a Shaker end table. A little Googling revealed that I was far from the first to come upon this form as a good project for a starting woodworker. Hundreds of inspiration-pictures are available out there, as well as instruction pamphlets and DVDs to buy.
A walk with the dog provided a very straight-grained 2x6 off-cut from a construction site's scrap pile. It was about 110 cm long, and would provide four very nice rift cut legs, or three rift cut and one flat cut leg and some resawn boards for the apron. My thrifty side prevailed, and I decided upon the latter, and got out a file to reshape the teeth of a flea-market Sandvik cross cut saw into a rip saw.
Sometimes I do have to step out of the closet. Here's the board with some layout lines resting on my sawbench. The sawbench, based upon one I saw last summer, and the toolchest, built in a class in England, normally reside together in the bedroom.
Resawing, and all the planing dimensioning of these boards, was done back in the closet workshop.
With four serviceable legs and pieces for the apron, I began keeping my eyes peeled for an appropriate top. Some sort of hardwood with nice grain would be ideal, but I was determined to use only salvaged lumber for this build, so it would have to be something that someone else had discarded...
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