>> TOM: Today on Classic Woodworking, we're making a live edge coffee table.

For this project, I'll head over to the hardwood store to grab a nice piece of black walnut for the table top.

I'll be working closer with the natural wood, keeping the live edge where the walnut plank retains the outer shape of the tree.

This table features sculpted edges, contrasting maple butterfly inlays, and these cantilevered and waterfall ends.

And it'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: Hi, I'm Tom McLaughlin.

Today, I'm making a live edge coffee table.

But before I can get started, I need to find a special piece of walnut.

For that, I have a great store nearby that has incredible hardwoods, so I decided to head on over and see what they have.

♪ ♪ >> TOM: Hey, Heather.

It's great to see you again.

>> Good to see you, too.

>> TOM: I just love coming to this place, but tell me a little bit about what you have.

>> Sure.

Well, we've got over 350 bins of anything from black walnut, we've birdseye hard maple, and quarter sawn oak.

You know, definitely a little bit of something for everybody.

>> TOM: And it's so user-friendly with everything written right out.

We've got the dimensions and the prices are right here, so anyone could just come in and figure out exactly what they need.

>> Yeah, we try to have a lot of information out there for folks, so when you come in you can hand-select everything that you're looking for, from the rough stock, the surface stock.

It's all available.

>> TOM: I'm looking for a nice slab of walnut.

We want to make a live edge coffee table.

Do you got any of that?

>> Absolutely, I can show you right over here.

>> TOM: Great.

Oh, yeah, this looks awesome.

This is really nice live edge walnut in a great stack.

What I'm looking for is something that has some nice character that would be good for a coffee table.

These all look good.

I mean, I don't even mind a knot.

Something with character that... like, even a nice check like this one.

I can use this and actually put in some butterflies, and I love how it flares a little at the end.

I think we found our piece.

I'm going to head back to the shop.

>> TOM: Thanks a lot.

>> All right, good to see you.

Take care.

>> TOM: You too.

So here's my board.

Now, with live edge wide planks like this, one of the challenges is flattening them.

You can do it with a power planer, a hand plane, or a joiner if you have one wide enough, but most of us don't.

So I made this simple jig where you can take your work piece, lay it on the jig, and then we'll shim it up, then I'm going to pin it on the end with a screw so it doesn't shift.

(drill whirring) All I have to do is set a router into the rails on the sled, and the router just rides back and forth as I travel down the carriage.

Now, I just want to drop the router bit so I'm only skimming no more than an eighth of an inch.

I'll work my way across and right on down the board.

(router whirring) So I'll continue right down the plank so it's nice and flat.

I'll flip and do the other side.

(router whirring) So I've got my plank surfaced, both sides, and sanded.

Now it's time to work on the edges.

Now, the edges are "live" because they're natural, just how they were sawn off the tree, and I want to preserve as much of that as possible.

So to do that, I'll start with the wire brush in the drill, take off some of this light bark that still remains.

(drill whirring) Now, you may have noticed, I've got some damaged areas like right here and over here.

I want to remove that, so to do that, I'll use a spokeshave.

That looks nice.

it still has an undulation to it, and it feels natural.

Got that flow going with the grain on the edge.

So that looks great.

I can do a little more detailing with a card scraper and save some time sanding.

That feels great.

I'm ready to sand.

I'll go ahead and hit this whole edge, and I'll get the other edge, and we'll be ready to put in our butterflies.

(sander buzzes) So we got our sides all nicely cleaned up, and before I can do the ends, I'll inlay two butterfly-shaped pieces.

So, I'm thinking something in this area.

And I'll put a second one about... out a little further.

And I want to make this one a little larger to brace the crack closer to the end.

And here I created the two butterflies that I want.

I'll just put my patterns onto the birdseye, and I'm just going to use pen, because this will all get cut off anyway.

It'll be easier to see it in the bandsaw.

Now, you notice I have a little star at one end.

I just do that so that as I go through, I keep this butterfly oriented the same way.

Okay, so I've got my shapes all drawn out, I'm ready to saw them out on the bandsaw.

(bandsaw whirring) Now that I have my butterflies cut out, I need to clean up this bandsawn edge.

When I'm cleaning up these edges, I want to make sure that I'm keeping them square, so I'll substitute in the bullnose, and just get right down in there.

Now, I'll check it out.

That actually looks perfect.

Okay, all four edges look good.

Now I need to deal with end-grain, where I've got that bandsaw mark.

I'm just going to use a piece of sandpaper that's been glued to a block.

I've got 150 grit.

That looks great.

What we need to do is place them on the work piece and knife around.

Now, that can be a little tricky, because they may slip while you're in the middle of knifing.

So to prevent that from happening, I like to double-stick tape a couple spots on the back to make it less likely to slip.

I can take out my marking knife, using the flat back of my knife and get a nice, accurate knife line all around.

Now I'm ready to plunge route.

(router whirring) Now with those routed to the pen line, I'm ready to chisel to the knife line and check them for fit.

(hammering) That should do it.

Once these get set in, there's very little chance they'll come rising up again.

Here we go, we'll press that one in, that feels great.

Can almost press this all the way into the bottom.

That's great.

I'm going to tap it in all the way.

With our butterflies dry and set in place, we just to get them flush.

To do that, I'm just going to take a low-angle block plane and start with light cuts.

You can really see the bird's eye making it pop.

That feels good.

The rest I'll get with a card scraper, just finely detail them.

Sweeping in with the grain, and they start to look like they've been there forever.

Well, now, with our butterflies all set, we're ready to turn our attention to this sculpted end.

Now, this is where the freeform of this type of woodworking really takes hold.

You can do pretty much whatever you want on the end of a board like this.

Now, when I do this, I like to come back on this corner that's already cut, that's pretty much defined.

And I've got a check coming in here, I've got checks here, and this cut corner, so I'll just start with gently making some curves that get rid of those checks.

And maybe over here I'll give it a sweep-in like that.

Now, I'm going to take a jigsaw and just cut to that chalk line.

(jigsaw buzzing) Okay.

Now, what I'm going to do is on the cove cuts, I'll roll the edge under a bit, and then when I come to these outside curves, I'm going to roll the edge over the top, like this, so it actually seems to twist as it goes.

We've got to remove material quickly, and I'm going to use an old method.

This is a draw knife.

You want to just start removing some of this material on the corner.

Now, this is end-grain, so it's really tough.

The spokeshave is a much more controlled cut, because the blade that sticks out beyond the sole just a fraction of an inch.

So I'm really liking how this looks, and I'm just going to go to the rasp and then card-scrape and sand.

(sander whirring) (sander shuts off) So we finished our sculpted end, and I'm really pleased with it.

I like how it rolls over here and then back under, and over.

And this end grain is so polished, it's just inviting to the touch.

Looks beautiful.

Well, now, we turn our attention to the other end, our waterfall end.

And we call it a waterfall just because the grain will run off and straight down to the floor.

And we do that with a 90 degree corner.

So we need to cut a 45 degree miter into each of the pieces.

So I use a drafting triangle to get approximately 90 degrees to the grain.

Now, my table length is approximately 46 inches, so I made a mark there, and got my square line across.

And I've left enough material here so that I can have 18 inches from the top of the table to the floor.

(miter saw whirring) So that cut looks nice.

Now, the depth of that miter cut isn't quite enough for the thickness of my stock, so I'll finish that with a handsaw.

I'm going to use a Japanese saw and just get down in there.

I'm only about a sixteenth shy of getting through, so it's just a light cut.

There it is.

Okay, now, we need to take this off cut and make a second miter in this direction, and I want to do it as close as I can to that edge so that the grain will look continuous as it goes over the edge.

(miter saw whirring) (miter powers down) Now that our miters are cut, I'm ready to cut the waterfall end to length.

I set my fence at 18, and I'll ride against the fence with the point of my miter.

(table saw whirring) We've got our top mounted in the vise with our mitered end facing up, and our waterfall end has to be attached to that miter just like that.

Now, to do that...

I've gripped the board at 45 degrees and clamped it on the back, and I've made four indications where I want to cut a slot mortise for these biscuits.

So I'm going to go ahead and cut my biscuit slots on each miter, and then we'll test fit before we glue up.

(saw whirring) Now it's always a good idea, with any project to do a test fit beforehand, and also get your clamps arranged so that you can glue up calmly.

It's also a good idea, with a project like this, to have an extra set of hands, so I invited Calvin in, my shop assistant.

What's up, Calvin?

>> How's it going?

>> TOM: To help me spread some glue.

I'll get it on and you can spread it out.

So I'll get the biscuits glued in on one side here.

♪ ♪ Think I got enough glue now?

>> A little bit.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ >> TOM: How's that?

We getting good squeeze out?

>> We're getting great squeeze out.

>> TOM: I want to add, while we're here, these reinforcing glue blocks to the inside.

They'll be tucked under the table where you'll never see them.

We'll get our glue cleaned up, we can set this aside to dry, and we can get started working on our leg.

Now, you can do just about anything with a table like this for legs.

But I wanted to have a leg that gave the appearance of a cantilevered end, so I decided to make a curved leg.

I made first this sketch.

We would attach back about in the middle of the table, and the foot would land out but not beyond the end.

Then once I had that concept, I made a one-eighth inch scale drawing to the same and got some of the measurements of the actual parts.

And just to reinforce how I felt about it, I made a little model off of this scale drawing.

So, I went ahead, and from my scale drawing, did a full-size drawing, and came up with my pattern to support my table.

Now, once I have that, I'm just going to use the same thickness material as the top.

Lay my pattern on there.

Now, for maximum strength in this leg, I want the grain to run the long way, where I have that good strength of the grain.

And I'll get it right on there, and I'll trace it in a pen.

I want to see this really well.

And in that dark wood it's always better.

That's it.

Now, I just need to bandsaw this piece out, and I want to be sure to leave the line on each end.

(bandsaw whirring) So I was really pleased with my leg design until my model revealed a flaw.

And that is that when you press on these outer points of the table, it was very unstable.

So I decided to add a cross brace that would sit under the foot, and be joined to the bottom of the foot.

So we're joining these pieces together with a dado in the top of our support brace, about half the height.

And a dado of the same height in the bottom of the leg.

That way, they'll interlock together, giving us the stability that we need.

And to make those cuts, we'll head to the table saw.

So I've got the dado cutter set in the table saw with my cross-cut sled, and I've secured our leg at a 90 degree to the foot against the fence, right where I want to make the dado cut.

Now, I've made an indication where I have to make that cut, and I'll move it over until it's just the thickness of my support brace so it fits up in there.

(table saw whirring) So coming off the table saw, I went to the bandsaw and cut a couple tapers to make the profile look a little nicer going down to the floor.

Now, let's check our fit.

That interlocking dado is a nice joint, especially when it fits like that.

Now, we do a little more pillowing, or softening the surface of this and the outer leg before we would assemble this.

Now, let's talk about how this leg will attach to the table.

To do that, I'm going to plunge route using this pattern, and this router with a five-eighth-inch collar that will guide me to plunge for the mortises in the top of my leg, and the underside of the table.

And then we'll use these floating tenons to glue it up and give us a nice, strong connection.

(router whirring) (router powering down) So when we're ready to glue up, we'll glue in these floating tenons into our mortises in the leg, then we'll get some glue into the mortises in the table, then set it down.

That's a nice fit.

Now, we'll secure it, almost like clamps, using these two screws in the underside of the leg.

These will help... (drill whirring) ...hold it while the glue sets up.

Now, to add even more reinforcement, we'll add some nice, hefty glue blocks on either side of the leg in the same way that we added the glue blocks here.

Let's see how it looks.

Whoo!

That's looking good.

I really love how the grain matches on our waterfall end, it flows over perfectly.

So, for finish, I love using shellac on walnut.

It warms it up so beautifully.

But as a durable topcoat, I'd use something like a lacquer over the top, or some type of varnish.

So there you have it, a beautiful, one-of-a-kind live edge coffee table.

Join me next time for more great projects 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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♪ ♪