I have been woodworking since my marriage in 1977.  I have been subscribed to Fine WoodWorking since 1987 to improve my techniques and draw inspiration from great builders.  At the beginning, I made furniture for our new family house and, since I retired, it’s been giving me pleasure to make projects for our children and grandchildren.  

Below is one of my latest creations that I wanted to share with you as it drew inspiration from multiple past FWW editions.

This is an Arts & Crafts coffee table I designed and built over the last winter out of interest for the style as we did not have a table in our living room.

The table is 19″ wide by 18″ high and 48″ long. It is made of ash cut from our  neighbor’s maple grove which I fell, milled and dried.  I strive to use as much timber as possible produced from local trees so that my furniture has a deep-rooted history.

As we wanted storage drawers and these had to be accessible from both sides, I opted for the use of rare earth magnets, similar to the Christian Beckvoort’s sewing table (Ref.: FWW no 261) which I also built a few years ago.

In addition, as the seasonal movement of the wood on the lower shelf could pose a problem, I adopted John Hartman’s stub tenon technique (Ref.: FFW no 289).
For the finish, I applied Minwax’s Early American oil-based stain to get as close as possible to an ammonia smoked finish as explained by Nancy R. Hiller (Ref.:FFW no 193).  I didn’t follow this method entirely because I wasn’t working with white oak. 

Making this coffee table took me between 100 and 125 hours.  I took the attatched photos and retain the rights for them.

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