After a couple of months working through various design elements and making a full size mock-up, I decided that I was ready to tackle the project. I was fortunate to source some beautiful walnut from the Irion Lumber Company (Wellsboro, PA). All of the parts were cut from a single 2ft section of a large 12/4 board.

After I used a doweling jig to cut the joinery, I roughed out the shape of the legs using a combination of template routing and band sawing. However, there was quite a bit of spoke shave and rasp work to get the pieces to their final shape. I also used some carving gouges around the sculpted joints to get exactly the shape that I wanted.

The triangular cross pieces that hold the legs together are made of three steam bent planks fastened together with splines and glue. One of the most difficult parts of the process was to get the ends of both the upper and lower crosspieces cut to the right angles and dimensions to match the legs. With the assistance of several shop made jigs and some very careful measuring, though, everything ended up coming together nicely.

The aluminum pieces were glued on with epoxy, and I used two small locating pins to keep everything lined up while the glue dried. Flushing the aluminum to the wood was another challenging aspect of the project. I actually found an aluminum flush trim router bit from Amana Tool that did the bulk of the work, but it still left a lip that I had to finish with a file.

I made a CAD drawing of the two glass table tops and had them fabricated by the Surbeck Waterjet Company (Ardmore, PA), and I had the glass edges polished at the Allegheny Glass and Mirror Company (Altoona, PA). I used a clear UV curing glue to attach the glass to the aluminum strips.

The table is finished with 2 coats of shellac, grain filler, 3 coats of varnish, and paste wax.

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