Coffee Table

Hey y’all,

I recently finished and photographed my first furniture class piece, this coffee table. Here’s a couple images; there’s a bunch of others and the process photos available at the link below:

http://www.maxplummer.com/forest-table

The idea is to create rhythm and interest without leaning too much on novelty - this is going in my parent’s living room and I wanted to make something they wouldn’t get tired of. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

All the best,
Max



Nice piece! I like your approach.

These are often also used as storage room for cups, coasters, tea, snacks, documents, medicines etc. so why not be able to have small platforms in between.

I for one like it. I especially like the illusion of the dowels lifting the bottom off the ground (I assume it is an illusion).

Did you consider tapering the dowels to make them more organic? How about something other than a rectangle for the top and bottom? I ask because you have nice movement and the strict geometric shapes contradict that movement.

I hit your link. The dowels go through the bottom. Nice!

Very nice. You should post more of the pics in the form. You will get more responses.

I like the combination of whimsy with pragmatism. It is a fun concept but also efficiently made. Also, your jigs are clever.

Thank you for your comment! I did consider a few other options: texturing the dowels with a die grinder or a chisel, using twigs instead, etc etc, but all things considered I was too intimidated by those options because I was concerned with craft issues. The overall form is a rectangle for a similar reason, but also just because it made the most sense within the context of my parent’s living room. Nothing in there is too intense and I didn’t want the whole room to be about the table they didn’t even pick. :smiley:

Thank you again!

Thank you Michael! And I will.

Fun concept. This is a great start. I can imagine a version where the dowel we different species and the top and bottom are stained differently, but finding a balance of striking that forest metaphor just right may be challenging. Could be a fun series.

As far as craft, are you planning on removing the epoxy from the bottom of the top piece?
Did you consider flushcutting the dowels to the top of the surface?

That epoxy stuck out to me as well. There could be a designed solution there to the assembly. mmm, flush cut to the top…

A CAD program could easily determine where receiving holes would be on the top surface. A forstner bit would allow drilling without drilling through.

The problem would be alignment. With so many dowels, and they are not parallel, you would have to feed them one at a time through the bottom to the top surface. Gluing that would get sloppy, probably not much better than the current epoxy.

And to be honest, I would question the holding power of the epoxy on the end grain. But the fact that there are so many points of contact, it’s probably fine.

just don’t jump on it durning a game of beer pong… (maybe that was just my college years?)

To those of y’all talking about the epoxy, I totally agree. I thought for a while about solutions to that, and I think in the end I’m going to end up filing off or adding a radius to the current situation.

All the solutions that had to do with adding holes to both sides required a level of precision I don’t think we have in our school shop, especially with my skill level added on top of that. Also, that many dowels would have been hard to manage just with the compound errors alone. Thanks for the advice, though, and next time I’ll be wiser.