A Table and a Tribute

This is not a car build thread. It is a coffee table I built as a wedding gift for my daughter and son-in-law. It will probably drive some of you engineers crazy, because it is entirely free form.

I am going to break one of my rules right from the start. I try not to use people's real names online, but this one deserves a little credit.

My High School shop teacher was named Ken Vliet. He taught wood shop in central New Jersey for a long time.

Mr. Vliet had a gift he used to build for newly married couples. He called it his "Wedding table". It was a small table, cut in half, then spliced back together with a gap in the middle. He described it as 2 individuals, each standing on their own 2 legs, but unable to stand without each other, bonded by the 3 bonds of faith, hope, and love. He made a couple every year and gave them to newlyweds.

My daughter heard me tell of these tables once, and asked me if I would build her one when she got married. I'm wrapped around her little finger, so of course I obliged.

Her wedding table started as 2 beautiful book matched slabs of cherry each 24" wide. I loved the idea of the book match, but that width was so huge it was not going to be a small table. Ultimately after staring at the grain for a few days, I decided I really wanted to utilize the crotch and burls which were in 1 of the slabs, and ignore the book match.

The tree defined the shape, I kind of discovered while I went.

Once the shape was established, I added 3 dovetails to tie it together.

I tried to make something curvy (because the table is all curves), but it looked too much like a pork chop:

I decided to stick with the dovetail shape, but made them a little cockeyed, just because. I mortised them into the tabletop:

Good help is always good to have!:

Let me get back to work... I'll post more later!

Very cool! We need more wood working here!

awesome.

Very cool! Following along, i'm in the middle of a kitchen table rebuild myself. I'm sick on the planer at the moment.

cool. Looking forward to seeing the process. Working on my sailboats is teaching me a new appreciation of woodworking. And patience.

Inletting dutchmen by hand. Nice. That's going to be a proper job. I'll rember this table Idea for when my little girl gets married.. IN LIKE 20 YEARS!

Those 20 years are going to go by much faster than you think- trust me!!

As an engineer, what is underneath to stop it from falling apart?

or does it get more dovetails under the top? ... Cool nonetheless.

SVreX wrote: Those 20 years are going to go by much faster than you think- trust me!!

I don't doubt it for a second. The first 6 have been a blur of monumental proportions.

Mad_Ratel wrote: As an engineer, what is underneath to stop it from falling apart? or does it get more dovetails under the top? ... Cool nonetheless.

It'll screwed to a setup of legs and stretchers underneath.

Mad_Ratel wrote: As an engineer, what is underneath to stop it from falling apart? or does it get more dovetails under the top? ... Cool nonetheless.

It's a good question, which I will get to shortly.

Fueled by Caffeine wrote:

Mad_Ratel wrote: As an engineer, what is underneath to stop it from falling apart? or does it get more dovetails under the top? ... Cool nonetheless.

It'll screwed to a setup of legs and stretchers underneath.

Nope.

I didn't want to build it like a typical table, with a skirt and apron which hold the legs together and attach to the top.

I wanted it to be held together by the 3 connections only. I'll show you. ;)

SVreX wrote:

Fueled by Caffeine wrote:

Mad_Ratel wrote: As an engineer, what is underneath to stop it from falling apart? or does it get more dovetails under the top? ... Cool nonetheless.

It'll screwed to a setup of legs and stretchers underneath.

Nope. I didn't want to build it like a typical table, with a skirt and apron which hold the legs together and attach to the top. I wanted it to be held together by the 3 connections only. I'll show you. ;)

Geroge Nakashima, everybody.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:

Hardly.

Though I did take a class once from James Krenov.

Going into a Mc Donald's doesn't make you a hamburger either!

SVreX wrote: In reply to Fueled by Caffeine: Hardly. Though I did take a class once from James Krenov. Going into a Mc Donald's doesn't make you a hamburger either!

So. I grew up a few towns away from Nakashima's home in New Hope, PA. I never got why people liked his stuff until I got older and went to see the Nakashima reading room here: http://www.michenermuseum.org/exhibitions/nakashima.php. They had a few other tables in an exhibit and it's stunning.

RossD wrote: Very cool! We need more wood working here!

Agreed. Don't get stingy on the pics, Paul!

OK, so after cutting in the dutchmen by hand, I glued them in place:

then sanded them flush:

Next, it was time to start the legs. I had a few Red Cedar timbers hanging around, and I cut some nice beefy legs out of them, then layed out the tenons. The easiest way for me to cut the mortises would be with a hole saw, so I cut round tenons:

I didn't want the legs to be square to the free form table top, I wanted them to splay at an angle. That met that the shoulder of the tenon would have to be angled, which made it a little harder. I probably could have come up with a jig of some sort to machine cut them, but I didn't mind cutting them by hand:

I roughed them with a dovetail saw, then got them close with a chisel. Technically, that's not a chisel. It's a timber framer's chisel called a slick. It's about 18" long (the size and weight actually helps with the accuracy):

I used a caliper to maintain the diameter on the tenon:

and finished it off with an old sanding belt:

Here you can see the angled shoulder tenons (plus my crappy looking shop!):

The leg placement was a little weird. The top is not square, so there is no "right" way to place the legs. There are, however, a whole lot of ways that seemed pretty wrong! I moved them around and eye-balled them until I was happy with the placement:

The bores in the table top were another one of those things where I probably could have spent a lot of time building a jib to do them accurately. In the end, I did it with a hand drill eye-balled to run parallel with a T-bevel square (sorry, no real science here on how to do it "right"):

Next, I had to deal with the structural problem that Mad_Ratel noted earlier. This table top is heavy, and fairly large. The dutchman (my daughter calls them "bowties" ) bind the top face of the top, but the bottom is in tension, and wants to fold in half. I had a strong aversion to any kind of skirt to hold it together- it HAD to be held by only 3 things (Faith, Hope, and Love). Eventually, I decided I needed more glued surface area in tension on the bottom face of the tabletop, and I inset 3 oak ribs under each of the dutchmen (where they cn't be seen from above), then sanded them flush just like the "bowties":

Before installing the legs, I had cut 2 kerfs into each tenon. I glued them up, drove wedges into the kerfs, then cut off the excess tenon and sanded flush:

Mr. Vliet was a better woodworker than me. His Wedding Tables would have looked more like a Chippendale piece. I've done a lot of timber framing, and like rustic stuff, so mine looked a bit more like this (it's more a refection of who I am):

Once assembled, I had a lot of sanding to do. Then came the finish. I used a gel wiping stain, and worked it into the wood:

then topped it off with 5 thin coats of satin poly, sanded between each coat:

And Voila! The final product:

Very neat! I like the legs through the top.

I did overlook one picture which I can't show you...

I made a little flip out panel on one end with my son and daughter's names and their wedding date, and the printed description of the meaning of the table.

So, why did I call this a tribute?

Well, because 40 years ago, a man named Ken Vliet taught me to love working with my hands, and put an idea in my head that I have now given as a gift to my son and daughter. I don't know if Mr. Vliet is still alive, but I know he deserves credit.

But also because there is a weird GRM car guy connection to this...

My first $20XX Challenge car was in 2004. It was an SVX. Part of that build included selling parts to meet the budget, and one of the people who contacted me to buy parts was a man whose last name was Vliet. I asked him if he knew Mr. Vliet, and he told me he was his father. So, somewhere out there is a car guy who used to drive an SVX named Vliet. Perhaps one of you knows him.

If you know him, please tell him I appreciate his father, and that he touched a lot of people. At least one of them is a car guy/woodworker who still builds Mr. Vliet's wedding tables.

That's awesome. Just truly great work.

very, very cool. it looks great.