A Sculpted Side Table
PROJECT #1825
Skill Level: Advanced Time: 1 Week Cost: $300
There used to be a store near my shop that sold vintage clothing and (honestly, pretty junky) furniture. But there was a coffee table in the window that always caught my eye. It wasn’t a particularly nice-looking table, but something about the flush surfaces and heavy round-overs between the legs and aprons always got my brain whirling: What happens when you turn a spindle leg but set it flush to an apron? Do you have to have a big clunky block like a Shaker table? Could you continue the turned section all the way up the leg? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. Or at least I couldn’t wrap my head around what it would look like.
My friend Roger Deatherage says he builds furniture to see what it’ll look like, and that was certainly the case with this table. I built it as a way to see what would happen if I joined a turned spindle leg to a flush-set apron.
As it turns out, it takes a bit of fussing to get everything to go together, but I think the results are well worth it: a simple (looking, at least) table with a few nice details that lead to versatility. The design lends itself to plenty of variation—I could see this table working as a desk, a large dining table or maybe as the base for a small cabinet. And although the table shown here is made out of Kwila (a dark, open-grained wood sometimes used as a substitute for mahogany), almost any relatively straight-grained wood would work well.
