>> TOM: This week on Classic Woodworking, we're making this contemporary end table with my good friend David Lamb.

It combines complementary materials, a warm brown walnut, and golden butternut.

This table has a figured top and an inlaid bead.

Each leg is stylishly turned in butternut, with a contrasting walnut foot, featuring an exquisitely carved transition from the square to the round leg.

And that's all coming up next, right here on Classic Woodworking.

♪ ♪ >> Funding is provided by: >> Woodworking is a passion.

Woodcraft understands that.

We offer name brands and tools for fine woodworking.

Woodcraft, proud sponsors of Classic Woodworking.

And by Felder.

>> It's not only about work.

It's about fun and success.

We are with you.

Felder Group is your partner for your woodworking projects.

>> And by SCM-- a rich heritage of woodworking technology since 1952.

>> TOM: I'm really excited this week to be making this contemporary table with two New England hardwoods with my good friend and neighbor, who happens to have been making furniture for over 40 years.

He's David Lamb.

>> Hey, bud.

>> TOM: Welcome, Dave.

>> Great to be here.

>> TOM: How did you develop your distinctive style?

>> Well, it's over years, but I think it's from my close association with Shaker Village and the Shaker style, my traditional apprenticeship, and I just love nature and, you know, flowers, leaves, even things like frost and ice patterns really inspire me.

>> TOM: So, what I love about this project is that all the information to make it is contained on a stick like this.

>> Yeah, the story stick is great, because everything is here, from the top, to the upper square, the transition piece, the turned tapered leg, and the added foot with a little tenon detail.

>> TOM: So, to make this, we're going to first turn the butternut legs.

And to do that, I've got four squares.

And to find the center, I like to set up a marking gauge where I can just score around all four sides, and then in each piece, I'll drive the spur center.

(taps mallet) I'll head over to the lathe, turn them out, and I'll meet you back here.

>> Sounds great.

>> TOM: So I've got my spur center set, and now I can place it into the lathe and bring up the live center tail stock.

Lock that in.

All set.

Now, I've got my high-collar pullover to keep the chips from getting in there.

Now, what I want to do is first turn the round bottom area, and then I'll move up to the square section.

(lathe whirring) So now I want to bring up my story stick and mark some of the key locations along the piece.

So, this point of the turning is the largest in the taper, so I want to get that to this dimension first.

I'm going to turn that down into the bead.

I'm ready to turn the bead, which I'll do with the point of the steel.

And I'll just shape it a little bit.

With the steel, I'll just very lightly shape in this larger area.

You're just blending right into the set diameter I made at the foot.

Now to set the diameter of the tenon, I'll use the actual drill bit that I'm going to drill the mortise hole into the foot.

I'll set my calipers so it just touches the drill bit.

Now we're ready for sanding.

I'll start with 150-grit and then go to 220.

(sanding) Now that this is done, I'll finish up the other three, cut our tenons to length, and get started on the feet.

Whew!

Got those legs all turned, Dave.

>> Oh, these look great, Tom.

You did a nice job.

>> TOM: Thank you.

>> So our next step are the feet.

So, you remember on the story stick here, we have this little spade foot, which is a little larger in diameter than the bottom of the leg.

>> TOM: Mm-hmm.

We started with some square stock and then knocked the corners off to make it roughly octagonal.

Then we just chop it into our one-and-five-eighth-inch length to make our foot.

Now, I've got to mark the centers similar to the way we did on the legs.

I just need to take these to the drill press, drill out our half-inch mortise, and we'll be ready to turn them.

>> Sounds good.

(drill rumbling) (drill whirring) >> So now, we go back to our pattern, and we see we have the diameters we need to shoot for, so I just need to jam this on.

Get that nice and tight.

Adjust my tail stock and turn.

(squealing) I just want to cut a nice, clean taper.

So I have the taper turned on the foot.

My next step is to cut the little tiny cove on the top of the foot to transition to where the leg will be.

And that's a fun little detail, because it's so small.

(sanding) (clicks off machine) All right, Tom.

>> TOM: That's it, huh?

>> That's it.

Let's just take that off the chuck.

Slip it on that leg.

>> TOM: Very nice.

Wow, so... that fits perfectly.

>> Look at that.

>> TOM: Beautiful.

>> (laughs) >> TOM: All right, we've just got three more to do and then we'll be ready to glue them on.

>> Sounds great.

>> TOM: So what's great about the way you turn these feet is the mortise was the axis, so when they go on, you have a perfectly concentric foot.

All we need now is a little glue.

This is satisfying to get this done, huh, Dave?

>> Yeah, this is great.

We're getting close.

>> TOM: With all of those seated up tight, I can now go to the table saw, indexing off the foot, and trim our legs to length.

>> Perfect.

(table saw whirring) >> TOM: So, Dave, I've got the legs all cut to length.

We're ready for mortising.

Now, you've got a method you want to use on this table.

>> Yeah.

I like to use what's called a haunched mortise and tenon.

There's a very shallow mortise at the top.

We do that because when you have a flush fit, that little haunch keeps everything from moving, it keeps everything nice and flush.

>> TOM: All right, so I'm going to lay those out on our legs, and to do that, I'll first mark where I want to have the mortises, so I'll choose the best-looking sides of the leg and make a scribble mark.

The mortises are oriented to one side.

Now I'm ready to mark the height of the mortise.

To do that, I want my actual rails.

These rails have been already dimensioned, and I'm going to set up a combination square so that I'm flush right to the top of the leg.

Now I can just take the combination square over to my legs, and getting it on a surface where I have a scribble, I'll hold it flat on the top and make a little mark at the bottom.

Now, once I've marked the bottom of all my four-inch rails, I want to set to a five-eighths depth, and this will indicate where my haunch begins.

Indexing off the top of the leg, above the marked mortise, make a little pencil line.

Well, with them all marked out, we're ready to head to the mortiser.

Now, when I make my cut, I've set my depth stop for the full depth of cut during most of the mortise.

Then I'll place this block, which will limit the travel of the stop and cut the shallower depth of the haunch.

(mortiser humming) I'm ready for that big moment.

I've been waiting for you to carve these legs, Dave.

>> Well, this table's a great project all around, but this is kind of a fun... a fun aspect of it, is the transition.

And we've come up with a very nice transition to do here.

There will be just a very simple floral pattern that will get repeated, it'll be drawn on with this cardboard pattern.

I'm going to be filing this little corner off, from this pencil line down to the bead, just creating a flat plane.

(filing) Be careful not to hit that bead with your file.

So you can see here this outline that's presenting itself, and this is just geometry, and that's what's fun about it.

So that all I'm going to be doing is tracing this onto here, and that is creating the pattern that we're going to carve to.

We're ready for carving.

>> TOM: Let's see it.

>> The first step is to knife, and I use this utility knife, actually, and I just lightly follow that pencil line.

And then I go over it a couple of times to increase my depth a little bit.

It's better to do it gradually rather than all at once.

And butternut is a nice wood to carve, because it's firm, but it's not too hard.

Now I'm going to take this number three sweep gouge and just start removing this triangular space.

And I only go up to the square pencil line here.

All right.

Do the other side.

So that's pretty much done, and now I'm just going to create a center line for this leaf, and I'm going to pitch it to the left and to the right to create the effect of a vein.

Because carving is all about shadow, not so much shape.

Although shape, of course, plays into it, but you're trying to create a surface that reflects light so you can see the different aspects.

>> TOM: All right.

>> All right, so we have that last face done.

Now we're ready to do the corner leaf carving.

>> TOM: Okay.

>> I'll clean that up and put in the vein.

These little blocks help hold it into the vise, because you have to have it at an angle.

>> TOM: Mm-hmm.

>> What I really like about the carving tools, it leaves a different texture, it's not all sanded, and I like to leave it that way.

>> TOM: So, no sanding when you're done?

>> So no sanding.

>> TOM: Nice.

>> So I just go over all this.

Turn textured with a number three sweep.

>> TOM: Nice.

>> And I try to clean it up to that corner.

Okay, and now we're going to carve this vein right down the center of the leaf with a V-gouge.

>> TOM: Mm-hmm.

>> And I start with this larger gouge, and I like to finish with a smaller one, because it allows me to get right in tight.

>> TOM: Oh, yeah.

>> To the bottom of that bead without leaving a big mark.

There, and there's the vein.

>> TOM: That is so nice of a detail, and you make it look so easy.

Hey, now you just got three more and our legs will be finished, and we'll be ready to cut the tenons on our aprons.

>> Great.

>> TOM: So I've got my apron pieces all cut to length, allowing for one-inch tenons at each end.

Now, I have to set up to make my cheek cuts for the tenons.

To do that, I'll just take one of my apron pieces.

So I want this face to be flush with the base of the leg, so I'll just set it in place till it feels good and flush, and then I'll make a pencil line right here.

So I've set up my saw with my vertical fence to cut the cheek.

I'm going to use this handy little quarter-inch tenon spacer, which indexes my piece exactly the distance I need to fit into our quarter-inch mortises we've already cut.

So, after I've made these cuts, I'll reset the saw, set a stop to cut my one-inch shoulders so I'll have one-inch-length tenons.

(table saw whirring) So I've set up the band saw to cut our little quarter-inch-long haunch, and then I'm going to reset the saw to complete the second cut of the notch.

(bandsaw whirring) All right, so the last thing that we need to do before we can glue up our table is cut these slots in the top inside of the rail.

And I'm going to take this over to the router table and make those slot cuts.

(router whirring) Now, in gluing up, it's always a good idea to do a pre-fit, and if you can press fit with hand pressure, you just know that's going to be a great joint.

Gluing up, I like to just disassemble in an orderly way so I get glue in the right mortise.

We'll move as quickly as we can here.

Now, when we set them, we want to have the top of the rail flush at the top of the leg as best we can.

Has to go here.

>> Perfect.

>> TOM: Wow, look at that.

Great squeeze out, perfect.

♪ ♪ All right, I'll go ahead and fit this one.

♪ ♪ Beautiful.

That is one sturdy little table.

Now we just need to measure our diagonals to check for square.

I'll just pick two points.

Right at 22.

Right at 22.

We must've done something right.

(laughs) So let's talk about our top.

We want to finish with a 16-by-22-inch dimension.

Now, we were lucky enough to find some walnut boards that were over 16 inches wide, so we didn't even have to glue it up.

>> Most often, you're going to find a narrower piece of walnut.

This is a beautiful piece, too.

But the way to get that 16-inch width in a beautiful, invisible way is to get a continuous board, cut it, look for the long, straight grain, flip it around like that, and look at that.

A virtually invisible seam.

>> TOM: Now, I've already ripped my top to 16 inches wide.

I'm going to take it to the table saw and we'll cross cut to our 22-inch length.

Then, I'm going to hand it to you, Dave.

>> And I'll take it to the router table and round over the edges.

>> TOM: Sounds good.

(router whirring) (router whirring) >> TOM: So we've got our tabletop all finished with our round over profile, and now, the last detail we have to add to the table is this walnut inlaid bead that contrasts with the butternut.

Now, to make the stock for that bead, I just took a piece of walnut about an inch thick and ripped some one-eighth-inch strips at the table saw.

Now, with these one-eighth strips, we'll make our bead.

>> Tom, there are many ways to do this... >> TOM: Okay.

>> ...but we're going to show an old-fashioned way.

And this is really kind of fun.

And now I just have this old piece of shaper steel and it has the one-eighth-inch curve to it that is a perfect profile that'll pick up the curve that we put in the top.

So not only will it contrast, but it will have a relationship with the shape.

>> TOM: But you're not going to put it in the shaper?

>> I'm not going to put it in the shaper, I'm going to put this piece of stock in this little jig here.

So, now I'm just going to adjust my stop and just go back and forth like that, work my way down.

It wiggles around a little in this, which is okay, because it's holding it enough.

So, who needs to buy a shaper when you can do that, huh?

>> TOM: (laughs) >> Nice, smooth radius.

There, what do you think, huh?

>> TOM: That looks pretty sweet.

It's so thin that it was quick work to turn a nice little bead.

Now, we've got enough stock to go around our whole table if I rip off a narrow piece off each side.

So I'll go ahead to the bandsaw and take care of that.

(bandsaw whirring) >> TOM: All right, Dave, I've got the beads cut to width.

Instead of laying the bead on the bottom edge, we're doing something very different.

We're creating a little visual tension by going up just an eighth of an inch, so it means we have to run a groove all the way across, which means we have to do it on the table saw.

All right, so we're ready to make that scary cut.

To get prepared for this, I ran a block plane around and flushed up the surfaces so it would ride flat against the fence.

Also flushed up the legs to the apron and set our saw blade an eighth-inch high and so it will make a cut an eighth-inch above the bottom of the apron.

I'm going to just move slow and steady and I'm focusing on keeping the top of the table against the fence.

(table saw whirring) All right.

So we got the groove cut, Dave.

>> Yeah, it looks great, Tom.

>> TOM: What do you think?

>> Perfect.

Nice the way it wraps around, everything's lined up.

>> TOM: All right, so now, we're going to cut the miters to lay them in.

>> Yeah.

I made this little homemade miter box years ago... >> TOM: Okay.

>> ...For fitting tiny little things like this.

So, I use a little backsaw so I can start real easily by just cutting the first end.

And I just hold it in there with my thumb.

Set that in there, pull it back right to the corner.

>> TOM: Yep, that looks good.

>> Mark that corner.

>> TOM: That's it.

>> How's that?

>> TOM: It's perfect at this end.

I've got this little glue bottle and I'm going to just set a little bead in there and we can smear it out with the sticks.

Nice.

So you can feel as we pressed it in, it's almost like you get a little hydraulic... like, suction.

>> Hydraulic grab.

>> TOM: Yeah.

We can just leave that just like that.

That glue will set up quickly.

So we're going to continue around the other two sides and then we'll be ready to attach our top.

All right, we got our bead all set in beautifully all around.

>> Looks great.

>> TOM: So, the last thing we have to do is attach the top, and to do that, we're going to use our buttons into the slot that we cut earlier.

I just want to first set the table overhang, then I'll set the buttons in.

And snug them all down.

Ah, now the big reveal.

Whew!

I just love that design, Dave.

>> Didn't that come out nice?

>> TOM: That's sweet.

Well, for the finish, we applied a clear shellac, and when that hit the surface, those amber tones in the butternut and the streaks in the walnut really popped.

>> What a great combination, I love the colors.

>> TOM: Yeah, it's so sweet.

Well, there you have it.

A contemporary end table.

He's David Lamb, I'm Tom McLaughlin.

I'll see you next time, right here on Classic Woodworking.

>> Closed captioning is provided by AWFS, the Association of Woodworking and Furnishings Suppliers.

Funding is provided by... >> Woodworking is a passion.

Woodcraft understands that.

We offer name brands and tools for fine woodworking.

Woodcraft, proud sponsors of Classic Woodworking.

And by Felder.

>> It's not only about work.

It's about fun and success.

We are with you.

Felder Group is your partner for your woodworking projects.

♪ ♪ >> And by SCM-- a rich heritage of woodworking technology since 1952.

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