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by:
Ken Tunnard
photo: Donna Griffith
illustration: Len Churchill |
NIGHT STAND |
Build
this classic bedside table to match the
material and finish of your bed |
The
first nightstand I ever built was in carpentry school. Our class
shared the shop with the cabinetmaking program, and working
in that space really got me thinking about the direction I wanted
my woodworking to go. When I built this version, I thought back
on the past decade and all the nightstands I’ve built.
Many of the lessons I’ve learned since those years in
school are reflected in this design.
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| Just
the right height, this bedside table’s design
is made as compact as possible while accommodating
a glass of water, a lamp, a clock and other nighttime
necessities |
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One lesson I’ve learned is about how I treat the back
of furniture. I think it should look as nice as the front, even
if only to extend the usefulness of the piece. (One person’s
nightstand is another’s end table.) The purpose of a nightstand
is to hold things such as a lamp, an alarm clock, books and
a glass of water, so the piece should accommodate those sorts
of things. And when it comes to design, less is often more.
That’s why an understated approach with simple lines like
this one will match almost any bed.
Get started by dimensioning your
rough stock if you didn’t buy it pre-planed. I started
with rough 8/4 stock for the legs (two inches thick), then jointed
two adjoining faces flat and square. Rip the wood to width on
your tablesaw and plane it to a final thickness of 1 5/8".
Next comes work with some rough
4/4 stock (one inch actual thickness). Lay out your boards and
use a lumber crayon to mark oversized sections for the rails,
drawer parts and panels. Mark around knots and defects, and
think in terms of multiple pieces. The idea is to break long
boards into manageable chunks that can be jointed and planed
to final thickness. Rough-cut these pieces now, leaving an extra
two inches at each end to allow for planer snipe and other defects.
Plane the top, front rails and top drawer guides to 7/8".
The remainder of the stock needs to be planed to 3/4"-thick
for the door rails and drawer parts.
Rip all pieces to width now, then
cut to length. It’s especially important to cut the ends
of the rails exactly square, since the tenon-cutting technique
I recommend relies on this to give you square shoulders.
Mark
locations for the front rails on the front legs, and cut mortises
into the left and right inside faces. There are many ways to
do this, and I usually opt for a plunge router technique. Clamp
two legs into your bench vise, extending past the vise so the
router fence is unimpeded. The leg closest to you becomes the
guide for the fence while also creating a greater bearing surface
for the router to slide on. The leg behind gets the mortise
first. Fit your router with a 1/4" up-cutting spiral bit
to remove the waste, then square the mortises with a chisel
when you’re done. Repeat the process to cut mortises in
the neighbouring leg.
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| Large
half-blind dovetails keep the night table’s
drawer joinery nice and snug |
|
Like
mortises, tenons can be cut in many ways. After marking tenon
locations in pencil, I like to remove the bulk of the waste
with a bandsaw, then finish up with a table-mounted router fitted
with a straight bit. Orient the rails end down, with a square
piece of plywood against the fence behind the rail, to boost
safety and control.
The back rails and legs now need
a 1/4" x 5/16"-deep grooves to receive stub tenons
as well as the plywood panels. This can be done with a dado
blade in the tablesaw or a router spinning a 1/4" straight
bit. Centre the groove in the rails in the 3/4" stock.
The grooves in the legs should stop three inches short of the
bottom.
When you have the stiles and rails
cut, assemble these parts without glue and measure for the size
of veneered plywood panels you need to fit within them. Test-fit
again with everything in place, then put these parts aside for
now.
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| PART
1 | PART 2 |
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