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Despite being on baby watch for the last week, I managed to make some progress on the trestle base. I was hoping to be a father on father’s day this year, but it looks like no luck. So I spent the last couple weekends in the shop rough milling components, cutting joinery and doing some initial shaping. After milling out the basic blank for the sides of the trestle I laid out all the curves and the mortise for the cross stretcher. Before cutting the curves on the bandsaw I setup the drill press to hog out the waste for the stretcher mortise and the peak of the inner hyperbolic curves.
Next the 1/2 inch mortises were cut in all the trestle components for the loose tennons.
After cutting components out on the bandsaw I faired all the curves with a combination of oscillating spindle sander and spokeshave. It’s at this point in a project when things seem like they’re moving pretty fast, but then reality sets in when your realize how much shaping and sanding there is still to come.
I’m giving this piece a subtle pillowed look. To achieve this I first used a small beading router bit to remove the bulk of the waste and leave two shoulders which I then blend away with the spokeshave.
By the end of the day today I had gotten all of the initial shaping done. I’ll leave sanding to another day.
One quick peak at the mocked up assembly!
It’s a very exciting time in life right now. Our first daughter is due any day now and our life is about to re-center around a very special little girl. In my family, a lot of time gets spent in the kitchen and I think one of great hallmarks of family is gathering around the kitchen table for meals. Up to this point we’ve had a hand me down kitchen table that is an oak monstrosity from the 80’s that we painted to make it a little more contemporary. When we built our house a couple years ago we realized that this 48″ round table really didn’t fit the space well. A longer, rectangular configuration that could possibly seat 6-8 would be much better since we really don’t have a dining room. I’ve also been sitting on a stash of walnut that came from a fallen tree on my grandfather’s farm in 1957 that I think would be the perfect application for this table.
I wanted to go with a trestle style design to again compliment the slightly narrow space and keep an open feel so I came up with the above design and sketched it up in Pro/E. I spent this past weekend rough milling the heavy stock for the trestle ends and made a few templates and full size mock up of one of the sides just to solidify the design. I think the design will still be somewhat fluid as they always are with my stuff.
Coincidentally, my sister is also expecting a couple months after us and while talking to my father a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned that my grandfather, who is 86 years old and has never flown, wants to get on a plane and fly from Arizona to Tennessee this fall to see his two new great grandchildren. I’m hoping to show him my two latest creations, my daughter and our new family table built from his lumber 50 years later.
Aaron M. Wells 