Marc: You know, it's been quite some time
since I've been able to build a piece
of furniture for my own house.
That's exactly what we're gonna do today
because we need some end tables.
(upbeat music)
Marc: Before we get started,
we should probably talk a little bit about design concepts.
At some point in your woodworking career,
you decide that the plans that are out there
are just not adequate anymore.
You can't find exactly what you're looking for,
and you need to design something yourself.
It's really a great time in your woodworking growth
because you really start to learn
how to put parts together,
how to design relative sizes of parts.
You're not just counting on someone else's experience,
and something they've written down
to design your furniture piece for you.
You have a general idea, you have a general size,
and you kinda know what you want it to look like.
Maybe you don't even know that.
That's when it's time to start picking up
every resource you can get your hands on,
and put some sketches down on paper.
I know I want an end table.
I know I want something that maybe has
some kind of carved legs,
or some nice soft curves in it
that complements the furniture
that I've already built for my living room.
I also know the relative size
because I know exactly where I want it to go.
Those are the restraining factors.
Now, all it comes down to is creativity.
Let me give you a little bit of an explanation
on how I see creativity and design,
especially when it comes to things like originality,
I come from a science background so,
for me, I see these great discoveries
and the best inventions, the best processes,
have been developed because they built
on the experience and the work
of other scientists before them.
Otherwise, no one would come out of
from start to finish and be able
to understand genetic code if it wasn't already
built upon by previous work.
I see furniture in sort of the same way.
Of course, there's original ideas
that have never really been done before,
and a few people are capable of coming up with those,
but to me, when you've got access to things
like these design books, magazines,
furniture that you see on the Internet,
those are your starting points.
People have paved the way for us to take those ideas,
and just make them blossom
into something even more beautiful.
I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of
by finding a piece of furniture that you love,
that you think is great,
but you might be able to tweak it a little bit
to make it your own and make it different enough
from this person's original work
that you can call it your own.
I don't think there's anything to be embarrassed of
when you do that.
In looking through my design book,
I found this really cool little table.
It's got a glass top, curved legs.
It has that sculpted, one-piece look that I'm looking for.
I think it's gonna be perfect, but I don't have any plans.
All I have is this little tiny picture.
In fact, I think that's a good thing
because the variability,
just by me taking what I see
and trying to do my own interpretation of that,
is gonna give this piece a little bit
of a different look and a different shape
that will make it my own.
If I had the exact dimensions and scale drawings of this,
I might be tempted to copy it exactly,
and that's not what this is about.
It's about being inspired by this,
and making my own version.
If things are off a little bit, well no, they're not off.
That's perfect for my piece of furniture.
It might be off from this drawing, but who cares?
I'm not trying to reproduce this.
I'm trying to build something new.
(jazzy music)
Marc: The first step in the process is making a template.
Without a template, the legs are gonna all vary
from one to the other.
We've got four of them to make,
so it's very important that we get a nice solid template
that we can work from.
The good thing is, in this process of designing a template,
we can work out all the kinks, all the details,
and just make sure that everything looks the way
that we want it to look.
In fact, jointery at this point
is a second-level consideration.
I wanna see what this leg looks like first,
get that the way I want it to look,
and then make some jointery work
within the confines of what I've constructed in a leg.
A lot of people are intimidated at this step
because this is the point when you've gotta
take pencil to paper and create something out of nothing.
All we have is a little bit of inspiration,
and a small drawing, or a small photograph.
Again, we don't wanna copy it exactly, so what do we do?
The first thing is, I look at what my restrictions are.
I know I don't want this table
to be any higher than 22 inches,
so I take my template material
and I draw my mark at 22 inches at the top.
A few other things we know -
we know that we want multiple curves,
and we have a general idea of where those go.
I also know that I want from the top,
the piece that sticks up,
to only be about three inches
before that inside curve starts.
You basically start drawing it.
I actually draw right on my plywood.
I will draw this maybe 10 or 20 times,
erasing, drawing, erasing, or sort of like
manipulating the lines a little bit here and there
just to refine them.
Here's an example of the point that I might be at
that I would call step one.
I know approximately what I want this leg to look like,
and I would draw my event points here,
my total height, three inches down.
I know I want an inside curve here,
then to come back outside,
then another inside curve to the point that it hits the foot.
I know I want this piece to come up,
thin the leg out in this area a little bit,
and then come back out here,
and have a nice curve from the inside of the leg
that just very smoothly meets up with this crosspiece.
I know the leg piece itself is going to end somewhere in here.
That's where we're gonna have to come up
with jointery to fit that spot.
Once I'm at this point,
I literally will erase and refine, and erase and refine,
until I get it the way I want it to look.
A lot of times, you need to walk away from it.
You get to a point where you know it's not perfect,
but you're as far as you can go right now.
So, you step away from it.
Walk away. Do something else.
Maybe even have someone in the family
come over and take a look and say,
"What do you think looks off about this?
"Should this be thicker?
"Should it be more severe of a curve here?"
You'll be amazed at how much you can get,
information-wise, from other people,
just getting their opinions on what looks right.
Most people may not be able to put it in words,
but a lot of people will recognize
when something lacks the proportions that it should have,
and you wanna go on those gut feelings when you do this.
Once you have your basic shape
down on your template material,
cut it out on a bandsaw.
Keep it about an eighth or a sixteenth inch over the line,
and then I take it over
to the oscillating spindle sander,
and clean up and finesse those curves.
If your curves don't feel completely smooth
and you want them to be,
you can hit it with either something
like a flexible sanding strip.
This is just a very thin piece of oak,
straight-grained oak with some sandpaper
attached to it with double-stick tape.
You can even use a file
or something like this, which is a rasp,
to finesse those curves and get rid of any
of those little lumps left
by the oscillating spindle sander.
What I want to do is use a piece
of quarter-inch Baltic birch as sort
of a giant work space
to make a life-size drawing of what the profile
of the table is gonna look like.
This is great.
This is one leg and this gets us pretty far,
but sometimes, visually, things change
when there's another leg on this side.
You may decide you don't like the effect
that you've created with your curves,
and you might need to make a little change here or there.
So, this is a critical step
before we make any final decisions.
I will take my template,
and I'll actually draw it on the face of this piece.
Once I have the one side drawn,
I'll actually flip it over,
and make sure I put my end piece
at the total width that I want this table.
It's gonna be about 20 inches.
That's how I know where to place it.
Then, I am essentially tracing on the mirror image
of this work piece,
so that I can then step away
and look at the piece as a whole.
Is this the kind of look that I wanna go for?
I also wanna make sure
that I use my little angle guide here,
and determine what the best angle is
for these center stretchers,
because that, in and of itself, is gonna become
a separate part that I'm gonna need
to cut out later on.
I may even wanna make a template for that as well.
I've used a Sharpie instead of just a pencil,
so you guys can see it a little bit more clearly.
What's gonna happen here -
we've got this sort of - I don't know.
It kinda looks like the Indianapolis Colts symbol.
Eh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. (laughs)
Overall, it's kinda got the effect that I'm going for.
Again, a lot of these details have yet to be worked out,
so things can be finessed and thinned out,
maybe add a little curvature in there,
whatever's gonna look good at the time.
It's not set in stone yet,
so I don't have to worry about it.
Over the top, we're gonna have a recessed cut
into the top of each leg,
and then a solid top is gonna sit in place like that.
I'm pretty happy with the way this looks so far,
and I think we can proceed with cutting a sample leg.
I've actually already made a sample.
You don't necessarily have to,
but if you have the time and the material to do that,
I really recommend it.
It tells you a lot about the work piece
that you can't get from a two-dimensional drawing.
You may, at this point, even still come up
with something that you think really needs
to be adjusted in your template.
Better to find it now than after you've cut
your final working material for the table legs.
A few things that you wanna keep in mind here,
we haven't really talked much about jointery.
At some point, we're gonna have to have jointery
between this leg and this piece here.
What I'm envisioning is just a
traditional mortise and tenon;
perhaps in this case, maybe even a loose tenon.
I'm not a hundred percent sure
what I wanna do there yet,
but I know I need to figure it out
before I cut this leg out,
because this is nice and flat.
When this is a full piece of lumber,
like this would be a blank,
it's gonna be very easy
to create a mortise in this piece.
Try creating a mortise in this,
and you're gonna have quite a challenge on your hands.
It's important to have this down,
but make sure that you understand
we do need to resolve that jointery issue
before we start cutting our legs out.
I've got a design that I like.
I've got a nice solid template,
and I've got a pretty good idea
of where this project is headed.
Keep in mind that even at this stage,
I don't have a complete picture
of what this table is gonna look like,
or how it's even gonna be put together.
There are still some jointery unknowns
as far as I'm concerned
that I'm gonna develop as I go.
That may not work for everybody.
Some people may like to have this
all worked out ahead of time,
and make sure they know every piece of the puzzle
for the entire project.
In general, I don't have enough time to do that.
That would require me to make
a complete mock-up of the project,
re-evaluate it, and go back and do it again.
That's just not the way that I work.
For me, it's important to be flexible,
to adjust on the fly, and I gotta tell you,
some of my best design choices
have come about by accidents.
There have been times when I've screwed something up,
or I drilled too far, or I nicked something,
and I all of a sudden go, "Wait a minute.
"I can use an inlay to fix this."
Now that inlay becomes an integral part of that design.
I actually find design opportunities
coming out of accidents.
Not to necessarily promote doing that,
but that just may happen,
so it's important to be able to be flexible
and adjust on the fly as problems arise.
Decide what the right method is for you,
and do whatever works for you.
For me, I would have it no other way.
I love flying by the seat of my pants,
and just seeing what a project turns into.
Next time what we're gonna do is
not only cut out the legs,
but we are gonna start talking about this joint here,
between the crosspiece and the leg itself,
what the best joint is, why I'm using it,
and then, of course, we'll probably be able
to cut the joint and then cut out the leg itself.