Tuned up table design
Jono Everett with his Tuned table. ‘Tuned’ refers to the rhythm of the making process, and is ‘a table design paring back to express continuous flowing lines and singular planes to produce definitive shadow play and crisp edges’.
Words and photos: Jono Everett
Illustration: Graham Sands
I’m putting it out there. I love designing and making and I love tables. With Tuned, an eight-seater table, I’ve pushed to find a minimalist design, stripped back to basic elements – drawing on Scandinavian design principles of contemporary simplicity.
This is a nice project – even if you don’t have a lot of gear. Here is how I settled on this design and how I tackled the making of this table.
Design – my five principles
I often ponder the design approach on commissioned pieces for quite some time, until I can reach an agreement in my head (sorry clients). My blueprint for design is to make sure I’ve considered these basic five principles:
1. Bring something completely original. I treat each commission as a unique piece. I try to find a progression in my work, each piece better than the last (sorry former clients), focusing on clean, strong and clearly expressed lines.
2. Incorporate my design language and aesthetic approach to the piece
3. minimise timber use, minimise waste. Maximise structural integrity and aesthetic qualities.
4. Draw design clues from the client’s house/aesthetics to ensure the piece will make sense in the space – form, details, section and timber choice. The handmade furniture piece doesn’t always have to be the hero in the room, often less is more and the design needs to strike the right balance for the environment.
5. Bed down the client’s practical requirements (make yourself a brief). Look at all aspects, ask the questions: How many people will be using it regularly and what will it be used for, (breakfast table, fine dining, everything/family table)? How often will they entertain? What is the table’s scale within the space? And, critically, what is the choice of chair? I don’t design a table without first knowing if I’m making the chair or what chair is to be selected. In this case the chair has a backrest established from a continuous extension of the leg, turning back on itself, providing a strong visual curve. Not to mirror that detail but the tables design speaks that same language.
Timber – it moves
Tables conventionally have a top mounted to an underframe. Tuned’s design brings the legs out to the table’s extremities, making the tabletop an integral structural and aesthetic element.
Fixing the legs directly to the top can be problematic. Let’s cut to the chase – woodworkers know, looking at this approach, that the obvious design issue here is wood movement. A tabletop is a large section of timber which will inevitably expand and contract, as much as 4% even for kiln dried timber – think aircon, a humid environment or direct sunlight. This fact can frustrate and destroy original design ideas. I’ve taught many students that have presented ideas that, well, are beautiful, but ultimately just won’t fly. Timber movement – ignore it at your own peril. Better to work with it, than pretend it’s not a thing.
One solution
So, we need to stop the table from racking and keep the tabletop flat, but if the legs are fixed to the top and an underframe, it will tear itself apart or put the table in twist.
Can you get away with a timber table design without an underframe – hmmm? I’ve seen it but it keeps me awake at night. I have previously used the approach of routing C-section steel channel under the top, across its width. I’m not a fan of this technique for a few reasons. It seems counterintuitive to remove meat from the table thickness, this will only assist to mitigate cupping across the table, not along its length and I worry about the different rates of movement between steel and timber.
I do get confused easily but I’ve never understood breadboard ends on indoor tables. So let’s not go doing that.
My design solution for the Tuned table is to directly fix the legs to the top and have the underframe a completely independent component. Both can do their own thing while keeping the top flat.
Let’s make it
I first dressed the boards for the top oversize and left them stickered, waited a fortnight to ensure they shook out any movement. I then redressed to section and skim the edges to be joined with a handplane to ensure a precision join using dominos and epoxy glue.
1. Bandsawing the taper on the outer faces of the legs.
2. A jig was made to hold the legs on the router table.
After sanding, I checked and rechecked the underside of the top is flat. For this table to work, it needs to stay flat! If the top cups, it will make the legs splay. A chunky 45mm thick top gives me enough to express the sides and end curves as well as allowing good depth for the leg tenons into the top.
3, 4. Showing the routing process using the jig.
The 90 x 90mm legs have the top and bottom faces compound docked parallel to provide a 5° splay outward in both directions. The joinery is done first, shaping late.
I can now cut two dominos (floating tenons) in the top face and into the underside of the table top. I cut the taper on the legs outside faces on the bandsaw (photo 1) and cleaned up on a jig on the inverted router (photos 2, 3, 4) and cut a flat on the inside of the leg for a stubby rail to give the leg more strength (photos 5, 6, 7, 8).
5–8. A flat for a short rail was cut on the inside of the leg for added strength.
A word of warning here – if your table design has legs plumb to the floor, cut a taper on the inside – otherwise your table will look pigeon-toed. I have compensated for this with the 5° splay. This gives the table an elegant ‘grounded look’ with the splay out from the table ends, though not enough for a person to trip over or interfere with a chair.
9, 10. Graduated lines are drawn on the edge and progressively shaped back to. A handplane is an efficient way to next create the curves on the ends of the top.
The curve for the tabletop was compass scribed on the sides, then using a combination square, staged increments drawn on the tabletop (photos 9, 10). The spacing of these are not important but they are critical in ‘keeping the line’. The curve needs to be kept true along its length. If you lose that reference you won’t get it back, and inaccuracies along that curve will be very apparent once a finish is applied.
11. A router works to initially remove the bulk of the waste.
I used a router to move the bulk of the waste (photo 10), then incrementally brought the curve down to the line with a hand plane (photos 11, 12). I cleaned off any stepping and finish sanded with a long sanding block, ensuring I keep the curve true (photo 13). Using a power plane here could be considered a low level criminal offence.
13. The last stage is carried out with a sanding block and sandpaper.
The underside of the tabletop sides then ripped at 30° on the tablesaw, slightly oversized. This angle takes all the visual weight out of the tops appearance leaving a 3mm knife edge. Legs now glued to the underside of the top (photo 14).
14. Gluing the legs into the tabletop.
The underside curve of the top is now brought down to and married into the leg curve with a convex spokeshave and carefully let in with rasping and hand sanding (photo 15). Highly satisfying.
15. The curves of top are continued into the legs with a spokeshave, rasp and hand sanding.
A 60mm deep ‘floating’ underframe was mounted under the tabletop with timber buttons, set well back from the ends and sides to give the table a light, weightless appearance (photo 16).
16. The ‘floating’ underframe is an independent structure that is attached with table buttons.
17. Two coats of hardwax oil were followed by silicon-free wax which was further buffed.
I applied two coats of satin hard wax oil and buffed with an open weave cloth until my arm was sore – this brings up a beautiful burnish on the curves and finish with a silicon free natural wax (photos 17, 18).
18. The angled edge and curved ends of the top work to create slim lines.
Jono Everett @everett_creative is a furniture maker, artist and designer and co-manages the Soap Factory arts collective, Newcastle. You can read more about Jono’s practice in the article that appeared in AWR#123.