The Vine Table was inspired by the clematis growing in our yard and other tables with overlapped legs.  The Walnut vine shaped legs seem to swirl around the table and climb the base to the mitered Zebrawood top.  I created excitement by using the Zebrewood’s linear grain pattern and mitering four pieces to form the top.  I added a vine shaped metal pull for amall drawer to reinforce the overall vine design.

The base is made entirely of walnut.  I first made a template and routed the basic leg shape.  Then I hand shaped the legs with a spoke shave, rasps, card scraper and sanding to simulate the round smoothness of vine stems.  In addition to the vine appearance, each leg is tapered – smaller at the bottom to larger at the top.

The sides of the table are mitered and the drawer front is mitered to match the sides and provides definite closure to the drawer.  Except for the drawer pull, this made the drawer almost invisible because the Walnut’s grain pattern is matched around all the sides.  The legs are joined to the table’s sides using floating tenons.  The shelf is secured to each of the legs using doubled pocket screws.

The table is finished with two coats of shellac and six coats of wipe-on polyurethane followed by a very light coat of buffed wax.

The most difficult thing in making the table was getting the top’s miters exactly correct.  On a miter of this size, even 1/10th of a degree error was failure.

The table is 14 1/2″W x 14 1/2″D x 33″H.

Launch Gallery