Can anyone give me some guidance and where I might find plans for the piece of furniture in the attachment. I don’t know the name or style of the piece just that my wife wants me to build 2 of these. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks Mike
Discussion Forum
Get It All!
UNLIMITED Membership is like taking a master class in woodworking for less than $10 a month.
Start Your Free TrialCategories
Discussion Forum
Digital Plans Library
Member exclusive! – Plans for everyone – from beginners to experts – right at your fingertips.
Highlights
-
Shape Your Skills
when you sign up for our emails
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. -
Shop Talk Live Podcast -
Our favorite articles and videos -
E-Learning Courses from Fine Woodworking
-
-
Replies
I "suspect" this just a "late reinvention" of an English drum table. I don't recall ever seeing an original from 19th c. - most likely a 20th c onward form. You will be hard pressed to find plans for it as such.
Very challenging to get those curves. Definitely requires lamination and/or veneering.
Since that's a commercially mass produced piece, I'm guessing you aren't going to find plans for it readily available. I would expect it would be fairly simple to develop plans for a reasonable facsimile, though. It's easy enough to find overall dimensions online and work out the rest of the dimensions. I guess determining how you want to build it and what tools and capabilities you have.
When I read this entry, I had to try my developing Sketch Up skills. Here's a screenshot and skp file. It's not as fancy as your picture but it could be embellished. Sorry, the skp file is not loading.
The sketch adds an interesting design twist. Rather than trying to form a circular frame ,requiring a multi layered thin material set over a prepared form,multiple two inch vertical beveled pieces fit into grooves cut into the base and top would form the sides.First,you dont have enough friends to force multiple thin pieces over a form.You would then need to connect this bent laminated piece to a circular piece top and bottom.Also,trimming this round piece could also present problems.
The alternative of fitting a series of say two inch wide beveled or slightly curved pieces into previously groved top and bottom pieces is fast and easy
This would be relatively easy to draw up your own plans. A barrel like that out of solid wood would require many seams and a great deal of waste but veneered over plywood ,which I suspect your photo example is, would be very possible. They make plywood specifically to produce curves like that. 1/4" often with the laminations all going in the same direction. Different manufacturers have their own names for it but " flex ply" is at least one of them. A disc at the top and a disc for the bottom , plywood or joined up boards and a 3 sided internal skeleton with, at a minimum, set to line up to support your the drawers. The dividers between the drawers could attach to those and finish the circle. Probably a bunch of trial and error mock ups to get the drawer fronts to line up perfectly with the drum. Your example solved some of that problem + other problems by using a molding strip there. Add a top and a bottom to taste and you have it!
Based on the dimensions of the one in the image, the piece is elliptical in plan view, not circular. Do you plan to stick with the same basic dimensions and three equally sized drawers?
Hello Dave. Not to do with this topic, in your upcoming SketchUp on-line class, how much experience with the program is required? Thanks
Hi. It would help to have a basic understanding of the tools but not really a lot of experience is required. You can look at the Square One videos on SketchUp's YouTube channel to see how the basic tools work.
It looks circular to me in that photo but an even more pronounced ellipse than that could be would be more to my liking. But then a circle is an ellipse, an ellipse is not necessarily
a circle.
As a circle I would think those drawers are not very deep. Math for an ellipse would change but the technique would be the same. I guess one could make the back of the drawers curved as well to get more depth.
I've done some fairly tight curves using solid wood and getting grain matchup and no flat spots is possible but exhausting and requires a lot of carefully selected wood! The narrower the pieces the easier it gets. Its sculpture in the end. Veneered over a substrate is the way to go for a consistent look all around. A bunch of strap clamps is handy for this kind of thing! Manufacturers of a thing like that have capabilities that we mooches do not. Sonic instantaneous gluing, microwaves, the ability to apply a finish in 15 seconds!
I do love these questions - a lot of fun trying to reverse-engineer from a photo.
Google lens reveals the designer calls it a 'drum table' - it's always worth putting images like this into the big G for extension ideas and occasionally you get the plans too.
Interestingly (and rarely) I could not find a single youtube video which featured building anything like this.
From an external look, I suspect that this is built as a frame and panel, with the curved parts of the frame most probably bent-laminated. The back panel is probably fairly thin or kerfed plywood - it has the look of rotary cut veneer. If it were my piece, I would use 1/8" cherry ply, which will bend nicely if you have the grain vertical as is shown on the original. I think there is probably a central upright in the middle of the back. This would provide a lot of additional strength and would make it much easier to set the sides in a smooth curve. There is a bow front door version of this cabinet on sale too and that has a central shelf which would require support - it makes sense that this would be on three points rather than two, adding to the evidence for a central divider at the back. The hard bit is getting the ply the right width - there is not much error tolerance - that's a bit to take your time and sneak up on the fit.
from a building perspective, I would look at this as being a bow-front cabinet with an aggressive curve - You have to extend the sides into a circle, is all.
The most challenging joinery will be the upright side pieces beside the drawers - if you can work those out, everything else will just fall into place. I would Build the drawer support frame with an angled front to limit the complexity of the cherry face piece.
The top is not at all easy, but FWW did an article on it recently: https://www.finewoodworking.com/2022/06/09/how-to-make-a-sunburst-veneer-top - this one has been done more simply. It is possible that it was laid out as a quartered sunburst, but that would be unlikely. Most likely it is an industrially made top (the veneers do not match the rest of the table), but it could be made with more of the cherry ply glued to an MDF or thicker ply substrate. Edge-banding it is no easy feat. I can't be sure, but I suspect that the example in the photo is veneered on MDF and this has then been painted to remove the need for more expensive edge treatment. This was a common method of construction for MCM furniture and the staining will hide a multitude of sins.
The drawers are almost certainly bent laminations with the final layer being more of the cherry ply to keep the grain consistent.
The materials cost should be pretty small. I could buy enough materials to make two of these for about NZD 550 (say about USD 350) as it's almost all MDF and very thin ply, all of which is cheap. You could be even cheaper if you make the drawers out of MDF rather than ply or secondary wood - they sell for USD 1350 EACH and that's ON SALE so by my reckoning, that's got to be worth the purchase of a vacuum press to make them. Looking at them, including edge-banding the top with segmented pieces, I'd guess about 40 hours to make a pair, spread over 3-4 weeks of evenings and weekends. Shop rule is to add 50% time to what you think it will take, and always quote the spouse 50% on top of that so assume it will take you 60 hours, and tell her 90 and 12 weeks. You have to be careful not to make the time quote so long that she'd rather buy them!
Note - I have never made one of these, but have made most parts of this in one form or another. I should very much appreciate any critique of my method of construction and opinions - have at it!
Have fun, and please share a picture of the finished product.