Most of the time a client approaches us with a rough idea of what they want and it takes several design iterations on our part to get to the final answer, but once in a blue moon, you find someone that knows exactly what they want. This was the case with one of our favorite clients, they provided us us with a detailed drawing of a nightstand / side table they wanted as well as the species of wood they wanted to use (maple). This allowed us to quickly pull the wood needed and get started on the project.
One of the of the interesting components of this project was the drawer face which will be made from birds-eye maple. Birds-eye maple is a highly figured type of wood that occurs randomly in the sugar maple tree. The resulting figure has swirling dots that resemble a bird’s eye giving the wood its name. The fun part about wood working for us is experimenting with new approaches and techniques. We wanted to see if we cold make the figure in the maple really pop, so we started testing several different types of dyes.
Test #1: The wood was dyed with a brown/black mixture, sanded, dyed with a red dye, sanded and finally died with yellow. We left half the block with the yellow dye and sanded the other half. The thin strip in the middle was covered before the yellow was added so only shows black and red. The idea of leaving the yellow was to see if we could produce an aged effect on the wood. Lastly, we applied a coat of our house finish to see what the final result would look like.
Test #2: Part of the wood was dyed yellow, part was left natural and part was dyed red. The wood was then sanded and finished (need to add finished photo)
We met with the client and reviewed our experiments as well as several other classic finishing approaches and decided on a path forward. With all of that sorted we were able to start construction. The maple was broken down into roughly dimensioned pieces and then run through the jointer to give us a perfectly flat reference surface.
Then the wood was passed through our planer to achieve the desired thickness, to the table saw to achieve the desired width and finally to the chop saw to achieve the final length.
As we were finishing cutting the components we glued up both the top and the bottom shelf and set them aside to dry.
Now it was time to work on forming the floating tenon joints that will hold the structure together. This is a fascinating process and you really start to see things coming together from a pile of boards to something stating to resemble a side table.
With the frame dry-fit, it was time to cut the groves for the panels. The easiest way for us to do this was to build a quick jig for our router to help with centering the panels leaving an even 1/4″ recess on both faces. Of course what the router provides in speed, it is limited to round corners and since our panels are square we had to rough in the the corners the old-fashioned way with a chisel and hammer.
Then the sides and back were dry-fit including the panels and then each piece was glued and clamped to sit overnight.
The next day the pieces were unclamped, combined, glued and re-clamped forming the major structure of the side table. Keeping things square is of primary concern in this phase so we used a bunch of corner-squares as well as a digital level to make sure things were correctly positioned before the glue set.
Next we cut the top and bottom shelves to their final dimensions. The plans called for a bull-nose on the top edge. A bull-nose is wood working terminology for an equal rounding to the top and bottom of an edge. This can be done by a specialized router bit or by rounding over the top and bottom edge with a router bit half the thickness of the board.
Then it was time to build and mount the drawer. We used Baltic Birch to fabricate the drawer and fabricated the drawer face out of birds-eye maple. The drawer will sit on full-extension slides and feature knobs that will match the other pieces in the client’s bedroom.
With assembly completed, it was time for the moment of truth… attempting to match the stain to the well-aged patina of the existing pieces. We took several passes at custom mixing a stain, and finally it was time to take the plunge. The first step was to apply a pre-stain to help the stain evenly penetrate the wood.
Once the pre-stain had dried sufficiently, we applied a coat of stain to the entire piece. The next morning, the stain had lightened a bit, so we applied a second coat and let it sit overnight.
Comfortable that the the color was close enough to the original sample given to us by the client, we proceeded to attach the top to the cabinet using a series of clips that will allow the top to move seasonally, but still remain solidly attached to the bottom. Next we followed up by applying several coats of our house finish to the entire piece.
Up Next… allowing the finish to cure, and delivery to its final destination.