I think furniture-making courses should be advertised as a form of self-help. I have gained more confidence, self worth and sense of achievement in the last month than ever before. Starting with a blank page and a bag of tools I have created a masterpiece table (well it is to me). Sure I have been told how to create a perfect mortise and tenon, to glue up and to finish properly but it’s my design, my woodworking and my mistakes that have created this Thing. So my first month learning to become a furniture maker has been very enjoyable and no I don’t miss office life.

I started the course 5 weeks ago and by the end of my first week I had prepared my saws, chisels and planes, made my bench hook and shooting block and started work on the table. The loose brief was to make a table to exhibition standard using mortise and tenon joints. The table should not include curves so as not to complicate this first project.

Having spent the last 3 months in preparation for the course, one would be forgiven for thinking that I would already have a barrage of designs waiting to be turned into reality. Not me. For some reason all the ideas that I had had over the months were now lost in vision. So I stayed up late one night and ran through my favourite design books, magazines and clippings looking for inspiration. The following morning I presented three ideas, the winner being “a challenging piece” for a complete novice.

I wanted to create a hall table with a solid thick top and narrow legs but it soon became apparent that a 100x30x10cm solid wooden tabletop could not be supported by 15mm square legs and still be stable enough to withstand Teletubby abuse without a trip to the cranial wing at the paediatric hospital. Rather than compromise the tabletop I opted for more sturdy legs with an H stretcher and grumbled for a day or two about how restrictive wood can be.

The next design challenge was creating a 100cm thick top from 1” cherry planks. Which way should a join the boards? I wanted to create the illusion of the top being a solid chunk of wood. Whilst I could try and match the planks or veneer, it would always be obvious that the top was not one piece of wood. Michael gave me some good advice, words to the tune of “If you cannot hide it completely then better make a feature of it otherwise it will look like a bodge job”. With this in mind I decided to lay 38 pieces of 1” cherry side by side to highlight grain and colour differences.

Having drawn my design to scale and marked out a full size version on a board to make sure the proportions where correct I selected the American Cherry from the timber merchants and set about building the frame.

The object of the exercise was to practice making perfect mortise and tenons with the tenons being cut by hand. I practiced hard. I still have some extra rails with a 5 degree twist between tenons as evidence of that practice. In the meantime I also learned how to safely use the bandsaw, planer/thicknesser and table saw to get from rough planks to legs in a couple of hours.

Having cut, squared and smoothed the pieces for the top and laid them out ready for gluing, I accidentally knocked them which gave me the idea for creating an illusion of a curve. I quick opinion poll in the workshop and the design had changed. I made a former to hold the pieces in place whilst routing two channels in the underside. By inserted spines in the channels I could locate all 38 pieces exactly making gluing up relatively easy.

Three days of planning and a lot of swearing later the top was perfectly flat, the ends square and the table ready for finishing. Since the table will not get heavy use I finished with a single application of shellac and a coat of Vaseline. Yes Vaseline.

So with table completed I have now moved on with confidence to the chair. Hopefully I’ll also pick up some speed because I’ve been looking at the financial reality of furniture making and speed is important…more on this next month.