College Design Crafts Project.......

The project was one of designing on paper a piece of furniture. It was to be built by hand.  That meant that once the instructor had picked the design from the sketchbook of twenty-five ideas,  I was to build it without using power tools. The instructor was a man who built tables of great design with natural woods, being used as a part of the design in unusual, nontraditional shapes.  Il was the early seventies and he looked more like a hippy than I did.

Hand cutting dove tails worked out good for me even though I had never done that before. I had to cut things smaller at a time and sand them so they would fit together like a person puts their fingers together inside of each finger.

The bottom cross joint was added to the design by the instructor, as her really did like the design on paper. The one bottom board has a white vein of color in it making it look different.  As a kid, I should have flipped and put the whiter wood on the bottom. I don’t know how I made that joint with a handsaw but I must have used a wood chisel too. I did cheat one weekend while visiting my parents. I took all the verticals to my Uncle Carl’s house and he help trim the all to be all the exact same length.  That did guarantee a better chance at getting it all to work.

This is complicated and I do remember now that I had many small squares to keep track of. To make things more complicated, I made two matching ones to be used like end tables or a coffee table when both pushed together. My glue job was done well but as you can see the one joint is letting go.

I have the second one in the basement, waiting for me to restore it. I remember how hard it was to  make these as we didn’t have enough lab time to create them.  I took the two to a park to put on the finish as I couldn’t do it in a dorm room.  I felt pretty strange back then, a twenty year old, painting finish at a picnic table.  I remember that a young boys baseball game was going on at the time. I had to hand sand everything and probably didn’t wipe off the dust back then.

As a class it was to be a purist type of class making us into hand craftsmen using fine wood.  The walnut wood and all the grain directions really help make this a great design. With all the experience I have now,  I am thinking that was an impossible task.

Thanks for stopping by today.

ps. I remember now that the boards came in this width and that make me create the table in relation to their widths. It made it a lot easier when the power tools were banned for use.