One of our client’s laid this dream project in our laps. Two reasons that we are excited. First, we love to reuse items that might find their way into a landfill. Second, we loved the challenge of how to modify Jean Prouvé’s mid century modern masterpiece, the EM Table, to fit the client’s vision.
The story begins with a set of stainless steel refrigerator doors that were damaged during shipping. The manufacturer sent replacements and left the original doors to be disposed of by our clients. Luckily our clients thought better. We worked collaboratively on the design and mocked up some sketches as well as a sample piece that demonstrated our vision for combining local oak and walnut along with some rounded soft edges that mimicked the metal legs of Prouvé’s original concept.
Once we agreed on a design and an approach, construction began by creating a template for the legs. With the template in hand we were able to optimize selecting boards from our inventory and then cut each one to size. The red oak for this project came from several trees that were downed by a storm in Kirkside, Missouri on May 19th of 2013. We have made several projects with this wood and thank the home owner for donating their tree.
Once we had the raw materials cut to length, we needed to dimension them to the width and thickness that we needed. This was done with a table-saw and planer. In the case of some of the boards with a live-edge, we snapped a chalk line, ran it through the band-saw, straightened the edge with the jointer and then took a pass on the table saw (moral to the story… working with rough lumber is a calling).
Next we laminated (fancy word for glued) the pieces together to create a sturdy and thicker leg. There are never enough clamps no matter how many you own.
Once the glue had set, we used our handy leg template to lay out 4 legs and rough cut on the band-saw making sure to stay proud of the line. Once the epoxy cured, it was sanded smooth and then the legs were trimmed using our template to form four identical legs. Epoxying produces a superior end product, but the intermediate steps are time consuming and often scary looking.
While the epoxy is drying, we started on fabricating the support for the legs. The metal was cut, welded and mounting flanges were attached to each of the ends. The flanges will attach to the flat part of the legs which will be perpendicular to the ground; adding the extra support needed.
With phase 1 of metal fabrication complete we turned back to the legs. We used the original template with some slight design modifications and our brand-new two inch flush trim router bit to make all four legs identical.
To achieve the inlaid walnut look that the client liked, we carved the channels in the legs with a dado blade on the table saw. Once the channel was cut a walnut strip was glued in place and then trimmed and sanded flush.
The final steps to completing the legs were to create the rounded corners with a router, use a horizontal borer to create a place to mount the leg levelers and lastly, to apply the finish.
With the finish on the legs drying, we began to finalize the metal fabrication and to paint all the metal flat black. Once the finish was dry we inserted the t-nuts to hold the screw-in levelers.
Things went together as smoothly as we could have hoped. First the base and then attaching the top.
The final step will be to create a small shelf that will mount to the top of the table to hide the holes in the door which the manufacturer originally intended for the handle (little did they know). Here is the final piece in its new forever home.
