I was selected to build a Mission style sofa table with some granite scraps from the clients kitchen. I used elements of Mission furniture such as through tenons, side slats, shelf, similar dimensions, and corbels, but that is where the similarities end. The top and shelf are cherry with Chinquapin (A type of local Chestnut) edging. The legs and slats are some type of tropical mystery hardwood from a shipping crate. The drawer pull is hand carved from Zircote, a dense South Americal hardwood. The drawer front and front/side panels are spalted maple, found on pallets.
The top is “floating” which I accomplished by adding a thin strip of 1/8” veneer painted black to accentuate the gap. There were 32 mortise and tenon joints in total, 8 of which are the through tenons used on the legs. Since I don’t have a mortiser, I used a forstner bit on my drill press and cleaned them up with chisels.
The mystery wood was extremely colorful, but too much so. To tone it down a notch and help it relate to the green granite, I used universal colorant to tint linseed oil to an olive green color. I applied this to everything except the spalted maple panels. After a few successive coats of oil, and giving it a week to dry, I used multiple coats of shellac to seal it and bring up the shine. The top and shelf also received a few coats of wipe on polyurethane, then carnuba wax to bring it to the shine and texture I wanted.
To keep the feet from scratching, I used 1/8” cork, cut to size, and glued it to the feet with contact cement.
And that’s about it!
Viewer Comments:
Wow! Both beautiful and interesting to look at. Thanks also for sharing your thought provoking variety of wood use.
This is a very interesting piece. Very well done. It really belongs in that room, I noticed the table is taking on the colors on the sofa and the rest of the room. If the table was in a different environment, it would look like rubbish. Sometimes when we design a piece we don't take the room into account, but you sure did. Nice job!
I knew they had a worldly arts and crafts thing going on in the room, and they they took photos of the room to show me. However, it was luck that they had reupholstered the couch a few weeks before I delivered the table. In the photo they had shown me, it was white, but the green that they had changed it to matched the green hue of the table.
A very nice example of what we can do with reclaiming woods for another use. Very well done!
Great work, Travis.
That's a very interesting drawer pull. Could you please elaborate on that?
@ Paul -
The drawer pull was an interesting, and lucky, process. When I started with the drawer all I had to go off of was the bookmatched front pieces, so I knew I had to do something creative to serve as a pull and mate the pieces in the middle, avoiding a butt joint. The pull has two main parts, each offering a different way to open the drawer. The first part is the a "cup pull" sort of cut into the drawer front, matching the curve of the lines of the spalting. It was cut upwards and the inside was painted black.
The protruding part of the pull was cut from Zircote, then filed smooth. I went through several different shapes and designs before landing on this one. Some came out too far, others didn't relate enough to anything else.
The drawer front and pull were waxed instead of oiled to keep it from darkening. And it just feels good. Feels right, to me anyway.
Nicely done. I really enjoy using pallet wood - lots of surprises.
The legs look like they are made from black oak. I made a table, and the material looks just like those you used in your table. Very beautiful table.
Thanks Herman, I only had four pieces of suitable size for legs, but their colors varied greatly. One of the back legs was actually bright yellow, though the tinted oil evened them out. I used the two pieces that had a lot of dark grain (weathering possibly?) in the front to possibly help tone it down.
