I had had enough of our tiny black metal ikea bedside tables. They were too low, too small, and the grating metal dinging and clanging every morning and evening had driven me to the edge, never mind the fact that I could barely fit one book and my iPhone on top. This one had been on the list for a long time.
Bedside tables are quite an undertaking for the hand tool woodworker. I searched around online and browsed furniture websites but the main designs were either the cabinet style or shaker-table style. While both are functional and attractive, neither appealed to me for this project. The small cabinet style takes a lot more material, stock prep, joinery and resources overall. I didn’t fancy spending six months building these in my spare time. The shaker table also would take time and resources I didn’t want to spend, but also aesthetically wouldn’t suit our bedroom and would look out of place.
At the other end of the spectrum, I did consider ultra-simple “rustic”-style boxes from a single board (we all know the type). I felt like Goldilocks at this point but this was too simple, too basic. I wanted a design that was just right – on joinery, the design, and timeframe for doability.
Some of the design considerations for this particular project were:
- To fit the space physically and aesthetically.
- Bigger than the old metal ones and sized to fit a) beside our bed and b) what we need to use them for.
- Not overly costly – otherwise we might as well buy new ones, and I wanted to use some scraps from the shop.
- Incorporate joinery.
- As a small challenge, incorporate angles.
- Of course it has to be realistic to make with a handful of hand tools in a small space.
- One requirement with most furniture commissioned by my wife is space to vacuum beneath it. I didn’t want anything too heavy and boxy, I wanted something lighter, more open.
The box-on-legs was the style that appealed to me the most. Obviously if I’m making boxes, they’re going to be dovetailed, so joinery: check. I went through some ideas for joining the legs: making a frame to attach to the underside; the inverted U style screwed to the sides. After ruminating, I wanted to join the legs to the cases in a simple way. I landed on simply making large housing joints on the legs for the boxes to sit in, with an angled front leg to ease the squareness/boxiness.
This is about the extent of my plans / schematics. Clearly I’m not a Sketchup person. I wouldn’t say it’s the most beautiful or graceful design, but it’s functional and original. It’s for me. It works in our space, I can build them on a budget and it beats the clanging metal every day.
Original designs are a challenge; there is no how-to guide. Making a set of two has it’s own dimension, especially because I tried to build them in parallel instead of one by one. Building one at a time means you learn from the mistakes of the first and improve in the second. Parallel runs the risk of making the same mistake multiple times all at once.
I only had to buy two 1x6x8 boards of oak and had 2×4 scraps that were long enough and could be ripped in half for the legs. I crosscut the oak in half to laminate two four foot long 1×12 panels. It was pre-dimensioned (S4S) but there was still some bow along the length. I jointed the 4ft lengths with a slight spring in the joint and for at least one of them, used only one clamp in the middle. Can you use only one clamp for a panel glue up? Definitely – this is my second time doing it on 4ft boards and it worked great.
One regret about this project is the orientation of the boards. I wish I could have matched the grain pattern on the panels for more consistent flow across the joints, for example joining the thin grain lines to thin instead of the flow going from cathedral to thin to cathedral to thin, like the bottom right panel in the picture below, but this was a limitation with glueing the longer panels then cutting to length.
When the panels were ready I crosscut them to final lengths and planed any discrepancies out; some cupping, and unevenness along the joint line. When the ends were squared I laid out the dovetails. I decided to work through the four corners of one box, then the other, but batched the task instead of finishing corners one by one – all the dovetails, then all the pins.
The dimensions of the boxes were essentially determined by the width of the laminated oak, and I used the panels so as to have no waste in the end.
I laid out the dovetails and worked through them on the first box. Saw the tails, cope out the waste, chisel out the remaining waste to the line. These went great except for some carelessness with the coping saw drifting past the base line. I transferred the tail marking to the pin boards using a sharp pencil – I find it easier to use pencil and work to the line than using a knife. I find it harder to make a clear line in end grain with the knife, and when I’ve tried I end up darkening them with the pencil anyway. I’ve gotten good results from marking with a pencil and working to dead on the outside extreme of the pencil line.
The dovetails on the first box came together quite nicely. Once it was joined I moved on to the next, but by this point after sitting for a few days in the shop the panels had cupped quite a lot. I had to flatten them again without losing too much thickness.
With both boxes joined I could start working on the legs. This was an incremental process to figure out what I was doing and how to do it. I had a finished height I was going for so started with crosscutting 2×4 to length with plenty to spare, then ripping it in half to make eight approximately 2×2 pieces. From there I flattened one face and squared one side.
The housings on the back legs were simple, just two square lines snug to the height of the boxes. I referenced the sides of the cases to get the distance, chose my depth, sawed the end lines and some relief cuts, then started knocking out the waste with a chisel, getting close to my gauge line.
Typically I would use a router plane to level the bottom of the housing but these were far too long. I tried making a router extension but it didn’t work, and the housing was too long to only reference from one side. Looking back, I could have made a router extension that’s longer on both sides to bridge the gap, but this was a side project I didn’t want to waste time on. Instead I used a square guide clamped to the leg along the depth line to pare across accurately which worked great. The other legs which had been trued up worked for this, and I used holdfasts to clamp everything to the benchtop. I pared down the bottom of the recess using the guide, test fitted, and pared the ends to eventually have a snug fit.
Rinse and repeat for the four back legs.
One mistake during this process – on the first one, the top lip popped off when fitting because I left too little excess length on the top. The short grain just popped right off on the first test fit. I had to glue it back on, and left more material for support on the next three.
Front legs were tricky to get the angles and length correct across all four legs. I started by laying the case on its side with the back leg attached and positioning the front leg, moving it around on the case to find the best angle. Once I was happy with the angle I held the leg in place and set a bevel gauge to that angle. Once I had the angle locked in, this was all I needed for the angles on the four legs. To mark the joint on the legs I would set one in position a set distance from the front of the case (I can’t remember this measurement, I chose what looked good with that angle), line it up with the bevel gauge and mark a little knife nick at the top and bottom on the leg, tight against the case. Then I could strike that line across the leg with the bevel gauge and cut the housing like the previous legs. These were more challenging and when sawing the angled lines, the saw wandered a bit leaving them a little looser than I had hoped for but tight enough that when it’s glued, it won’t be an issue.
Once the joints were cut and fitted I shaped the legs. I kept it simple, rounded the outside face and added a bevel and some shaping on the top.
I gave everything a quick pass with the smoothing plane and used the card scraper on any stubborn grain or tearout on the oak. I sanded everything with 220 grit before glue up. Assembly was straightforward with just the legs to attach to the cases. I applied glue along the full housing and pressed them on to the sides. I had to use batons across the legs to clamp them tightly – my clamps weren’t deep enough to reach in to clamp the legs directly.
Once the glue was dry I cleaned up any squeeze out and I applied a coat of danish oil then paste wax.
Overall I’m happy with the result. They are perfectly functional and should hold up for a while. The oak cost $76.84 so that plus consumables (negligible) is the total cost of the project. They’re not the most attractive bedside tables in the world but it doesn’t matter. They’re for me and my wife, in our space. It’s a venture out into the unknown, simply an attempt at making something unique and original. It’s a challenge to go off-script and I think that’s necessary to truly improve your skills in woodworking, or any creative craft. From the design stage to executing on an idea, there’s more to be learned than following a paint-by-numbers style tutorial or simply mimicking well-known styles or one person’s creations. Don’t get me wrong these have their place and there is a lot to be learned from these projects (my workbench for example) but for me the goal is to master the skills and translate them into bigger, better, original projects.
Either way, these two sure beat the dinging and clanging metal of a dinky little undersized IKEA one.
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