>> TOM: This week on Classic Woodworking, we're making a Shaker-inspired curly maple round table.

It's a perfect place for a leisurely breakfast for two.

It features flowing curves from the molded edge of the round top, a bold bottle-shape column, to the sweeping curved lines of the legs.

And the top unlocks and tilts up so it can conveniently nest in the corner, displaying the highly figured curly maple top.

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: To make this table, we start with some highly figured curly maple of good size.

You can really see that striped curly maple pattern throughout this table.

Now, the base consists of this central turn column.

And the three legs attach to the lower column with sliding dovetails up from the bottom.

Then we have the support block, and that's key to pivot the top, but the block attaches to the column with a heavy wedge tenon.

And the block has tenons of its own going into these reinforcing cleats, allowing the top to tilt and snap down.

(snaps shut) And to build it, it all starts with the legs.

To make a project like this with a lot of curves, it's always helpful to have a full-size drawing.

So, I've got my profile of the table, here, and I made a pattern right off of the drawing, being sure to leave this extra material for the dovetail, which will slide up into the column.

Now, once I have my pattern, I've got some pre-dimensioned one-and-seven-eighths-inch- thick stock, and I'm going to lay my pattern right on that stock and using a pen...

I like to use a pen because I can see it a lot better at the bandsaw.

This is perfect.

I'll get three legs out of here, and they'll all have the same curly figure, because we've got them all from the same board.

And that's it.

With them all drawn out, now I'm going to take it to the bandsaw and saw them out, being careful to leave the line.

(bandsaw whirring) Now, coming off the bandsaw, I cleaned up these surfaces at the bench with my spokeshave and a card scraper.

There's one last thing I like to do at the table saw before we cut our dovetail tenons.

That is square up these two surfaces.

I've made a little template, which actually holds the piece in position so it will index the leg and make a nice clean cut on this surface.

Then I'll just turn the leg and bump against this stop and cut the top nice, true, and square.

(table saw whirring) With our legs all cut, I want to actually set them aside now.

We want to go ahead and get our column made.

Now, this one I've already got all glued together.

And we chamfered off the corners at the table saw to make it faster and easier to turn.

Now we just have to head to the lathe and turn our column.

So I marked the centers of our column, and I got them mounted here in the lathe, and the first thing we want to do on our turning is get everything turned to this largest diameter.

(lathe buzzing) Now, we've got our largest diameters to the same size, and I want to bring back my pattern and I want to hold it up on the piece and mark the key areas where the diameter is changing.

So I've got right up here.

So I'm going to set my calipers and cut the different depths for the diameter there, and then we'll shape our column to the final shape.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Oh, that's looking good.

Now, the last thing we need to do before we take it out of the lathe is mark the three locations for our legs to come into the column.

We'll do that with an indexing head that's built right into the lathe.

I just need a little pin, and then I'll find the hole there.

I'll make a little mark.

And that's it.

We've got our legs marked out.

We're ready to cut our dovetail slots.

To simplify cutting our dovetail slots into our column, I've made this jig.

At the bottom of the jig, I've got a V groove, so that when I put the column in, it centers in the box.

Then I put a couple guide blocks in to keep it centered as well.

Now, I'm going to rotate so I see my indexing mark hit my gauge at the bottom.

Then I can ratchet clamp it down to hold it firmly into the jig.

We want to route a flat surface that's as wide or just a little wider than our leg, so we'll get that flat, and then we'll cut our dovetail in.

These two surfaces at the top are in perfect plane, so it gives us a great place to ride the router to skim off and create a flat.

(router whirring) Now that we've got our flat cut, we're ready to route the dovetail slot.

Now the slot cutter is one-inch wide, which is removing a lot of material, so I first want to drill some holes to make some relief cuts, so there's not as much stress on the bit.

(drill whirring) With our relief holes cut, now I'm going to route the dovetail slot.

I've got a router setup here with a one-inch wide, 14-degree dovetail cutter.

And I've attached these guiderails on with double-stick carpet tape so that it fits snugly over the guide box.

I'm going to just slide it in and keep it very steady and go up to the shoulder, then I'll turn it around and go the other direction as well, to make sure that the dovetail is centered.

(router whirring) That looks good.

But there's one more thing we need to do before we rotate the leg, and that is clean up right into this shoulder.

(mallet tapping chisel) Now I'll just clean it up with the flat.

That looks good.

And the last thing we need to do is to clean up the dovetail key here, all the way up into the slot.

(mallet tapping chisel) All right, that looks nice.

So, we'll just continue the process and get our other two dovetail slots in the same condition, and then we'll be ready to cut the dovetails on our legs.

Now that we've got all our sliding dovetail slots cut into our column, we're ready to cut the dovetails on the legs.

Now, to do that, I've marked out roughly where that dovetail will be.

And it's, it's a large one, it's about an inch across at the bottom, and we need to remove all this material.

And we'll do that on the router table.

The router bit will be spinning this way, and one of the things that you got to be aware of is it may tear out across the router table.

So what I like to do is set a marking gauge, which is really just a little knife, that's the same depth as the router bit and score across each piece.

Just by that score line, it'll prevent any tear out when we're running across the table.

Now that we've got all our lines scored, I want to get rid of some of this waste so it's not so stressful on the bit.

And to do that, I'll make the cut at the table saw.

(table saw whirring) So, with all the waste almost sawn away, we are ready to make our final dovetail pass and fit our legs into the column.

Now, we've put a 14-degree dovetail bit in the table, so we're ready to run our legs and we'll just fit them one at a time.

♪ ♪ So, now that we've got our legs all fitted up into the column, we have to shape them so they can form better with this column.

Now, what I like to do is take about a sixteenth of an inch spacer like this rule and hold it against the column and just get a pencil line right around the top of the leg.

So I'm going to blend the shape of this leg right to that pencil line.

Now, we also want to refine this leg a little so it's not so heavy at the bottom, so we'll taper it down to an inch and a quarter from the one and seven-eighths.

And I'll do that by making a line on the back, band sawing, and cleaning it up.

Once we have our taper, all that's left is to round and pillow the top of the leg so it conforms beautifully with the round of the column.

When I'm shaping a piece of wood, it feels sculptural and it's freeform, it's just my own expression into the piece.

(scraping) So now we've got all our legs tapered and pillowed beautifully.

We're ready to glue them into the column.

I like to set the column upside down in the vise.

I'm going to start with putting the glue on the dovetail, and very little, actually, in the dovetail slot.

By doing that, I won't get as much squeeze out down here on the column.

That's nice.

I want to move right along so this doesn't seize up.

That's it, ready to fit the next one.

Nice.

Beautiful.

I love to feel each one of them seat firmly on the bottom there.

And that's it.

We'll let this set for a little bit while we get started on making the block.

So the support block acts as a transition between the column and the top.

It's joined to the column with this one-and- three-quarter-inch tenon, and then it has these tenons that extend into the cleats so that it can pivot.

Now, to make the block, I started by dimensioning the piece and got it to our one-and-three-quarter-inch thickness.

I've marked the center hole, which we'll drill first.

And then we need to remove this material.

And then all the way down so that we're left with a one-inch square tenon, which we'll round over to form our pivot.

(bandsaw whirring) So to finish making our one-inch-square tenon, I've got to make a couple handsaw cuts to release this last piece of waste.

(handsaw teeth grinding) And that's it.

We've got our square tenons, but we've got to shape into our round tenons.

So to do that, I'm going to put it back in the vise and use a compass set to a half-inch, and I've got a center marked here.

Just going to let the compass describe the one-inch tenon.

So we've got our circles marked on both ends, and now we have to create the round tenon.

Now, to get that outside corner, it's really simple.

I'm just going to put a half-inch round over bit in the router table and round that over.

The other three sides, I'll draw lines and create an octagonal shape, saw down, rasp, and file until we fit our one-inch sample tenon.

(file scraping) Wow, that fits great.

That was pretty quick.

So I'm just going to do that to the other end, and we'll be ready to glue up our table.

So we've got our block all set with our round tenons, and I need to orient the block so that it's in plane with those front legs, so when we tilt up the top, it is also in plane.

So to do that, I'm just going to lay it down on a table, resting the legs, and then the block self-indexes.

So, I'm just going to make a little mark.

And we're all set.

So now, I'm just going to spread some glue on the tenon.

We'll brush it out.

I'm going to try to stay near the tenon so I don't get too much squeeze-out, but inevitably, you'll get some on this one.

That's plenty of glue.

I'll get just a little bit on the inside.

All right.

We're ready to glue it up.

So I'm going to look for my indexing lines.

Bring it down.

Now that I'm running in those screws, they really help to pull it down tightly before I drive the wedge.

Now we'll get a little glue in the curve, the saw curve.

And you always orient the wedge so that it spreads the tenon into end grain.

This gives you a little more resistance and a stronger bite.

(hammer tapping) So you just tap until it can't go any further, and it starts to make a sharp sound.

And you're all set.

And at this point, I want to set my plugs.

And I'll get a little glue into each of the holes.

Spread it on the side walls of the hole.

So I'm going to get a little glue on the plugs.

I'm going to orient the grain of the plug the same direction as the grain of the top block when I tap them in.

(hammer tapping) Let this dry for a little while, and we can talk about our cleats and our top.

The top of this table is the real showpiece, so I tried to find the most highly figured material I could, all taken from the same plank, so we knew we were going to have a nice color match at the end.

And we matched up the boards in the most favorable way so you can barely see the seams.

Now, to cut our round, I pre-made a round template, so all I have to do is lay it on my blank, and I'm going to trace around with a pen so we can see it well.

That's it, we've got our circle.

Now, something this large is a little more difficult to handle on a bandsaw, so I like to just use a jigsaw at the bench.

I'll just temporarily clamp it in place.

Now, when I jigsaw, I want to go in the direction with the grain so I don't tear out any fibers on the top.

♪ ♪ So you notice on my table, I left the line-- in fact, I'm well off the line-- because we're going to use our template as a guide and we'll flush route to this guide.

By routing to this pattern, we'll get a nice, smooth edge.

(router whirring) So to finish off our rounded top, we added this molded edge.

And for the base, I trimmed that wedge tenon and got it nice and flush.

Now we're ready to assemble.

Before we can do that, we had to make our cleats.

Using this pre-dimensioned stock and this template we got off of the full-size drawing, I was able to locate all of the screw holes to attach it and those one-inch round mortise holes for our tilt mechanism.

We'll go ahead and fit those on first.

I've already pre-drilled the table bottom for the screws, and I like to slip in a couple pieces of veneer, one on each side, that act as a spacer so it doesn't bind when it closes and opens.

And then we'll get it in position.

Just going to locate my screw holes here with the awl.

And we're ready to attach.

So I've got five screws on each cleat.

(drill whirring) And I've elongated the holes just a bit at the ends of the cleats to allow for the top to move.

(drill whirring) And that's it.

And now we'll see how it looks.

I'll just get out those pieces of veneer.

Whew!

Feels great to get it to this point.

And it works!

What a relief.

So the last thing I need to do is attach this type catch and then apply the finish.

For this finish, I applied a maple aniline dye, followed by shellac as a seal coat, then followed by glazing stain, more shellac, and a satin tung oil varnish.

There you have it.

Curly maple tilt-top table.

So, please, 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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