Formation

Remember the table and chairs I mentioned a few weeks ago? Well, we’re starting them this week. What you see in the pictures is the beginning of the table.

 

I have to work within my capabilities. I have a twenty-inch planer so I can’t possibly plane a 48” table all at once. Therefore, I have to make (in this case) 3 sections a little over 16” wide. I have planed them to 1¾” to begin although they shall be planed to 1¼”. I left them that thick in order to accommodate a slight warp. I’ll have to hand plane it out of the corners of the piece. You can’t use a planer to remove a warp. It’ll just be a thinner warp.

Once these pieces are planed to 1¼” and flat, I shall glue them together in a sheet and cut the whole thing to size (2-3’ sections for the ends and 2–1’ sections for the extenders).

That’s the process. Then there’s me. I have arrived at this place in my skills and my life by learning my limitations and the limitations of my machinery. I am not strong or sharp-eyed enough to move these pieces around quickly or see them much more than a step or two ahead. I don’t know if you’ve watched many of the how-to shows where people run through a project seemingly effortlessly. That all involves a lot of rehearsal and experience with a given project. I end up picking my way through a job, especially one as big as this one.

Thus, I get myself and my materials in formation.

See Bourgeois Furniture at Berkeley Art Works in Martinsburg, WV (this month featured in the front window) and in Capon Bridge, WV at Bent River Trading Company.