Final Project Process Blog

The first part of my process was measuring and marking my wood to map out where and how everything would come together. I began this step marking my plywood directly in half, then measuring and marking my table legs as to where the shelf would be.

After doing this, I then ripped my plywood in half to create both my table top and shelf.

With my plywood ripped into the appropiate sizes, I then proceeded to add the Veneer edge banding to tho plywood to finish it off. This was an interesting process to go through. It was a fairly easy and simple solution to the rough edges of the plywood. All of these steps were done with minimal problems and went by relatively smooth.

The major frustration I had with this night stand was finding a way to attach the legs to the table top. Using the premade table legs both helped and hurt. One they allowed for me to omit a step in the process of creating legs. However, when looking for threaded inserts that would fit my tables bolts I unfortunately could not find any. Instead I had to go with table leg plates. This caused for some adjustments in my project. I once again started by tracing the table plates on the table top to diagram their placement. 

This slight change in placement of the table legs caused me to have to adjust the lengths of my leg supports. I ended up having to change the lengths from my original measurements. This just added to the length of my time in the shop. 

With my supports now cut out to the correct lenght, I was ready to attach them to my legs. At first I wasn't really sure how these would attach. But after discussing the process with Tim, we decided that pocket screws would be the best option. The pocket screw machine was compltely new to me. However, after using it and creating my pockets I realized that it was a very simple and efficient way to attach my supports and legs without having any visible hardware. I actually thoroughly enjoyed setting up and using this pocket screw machine. And the pockets turned out quite nice. 

With the pockets created and the legs measured and marked as to where the supports would go I was ready to begin attaching the legs and supports. Using the pocket screws was very simple and worked very effectively. 

After I attached these supports to my legs, I began to attach my legs to my plates. This is the step in the process where I really had some frustrations and problems. When I lined up the ladder structure with the plates on, the table plates hung over the side of the table top just a bit. Despite this error, I decided that I had to continue as it was too late to go back and try to adjust this problem. When drilling in the plates, I also ran into some frustrations as it was a little problematic to drill them in as the drill would hit against the side of the table leg. Nonetheless, I was able to get through this step and attched my legs to the table top. 

After doing this I was eager to stand the table up, and with great joy I saw the table stand up straight and sturdy. The last part of my process was to insert the shelf. Again because of the table plates, I had to adjust the measurements of my shelf. Originally I planned for the legs to be directly on the corners of the table top and then cut the shelf around the legs and pocket screw them in. But becuase the table plates offset this I opted to instead rip down the shelf plywood one more time so that it would just slide in between the legs. Using the marks as to where the bottom of the shelf would be I screwed in my L-brackets as the method of holding the shelf. One major mistake I made was that I screwed in the L-bracktes the wrong way and had to take them back out and flip them over to make sure they were right side up, this added frustration becuase I was very close to finishing before that mistake. After correcting this mistake I placed the shelf on the brakcets and screwed them in to finish the night stand. Here is the final product:

Overall, the project didn't turn out as perfect as I would have liked, but that was part of the learning process. While I was disappointed in myself for making some of these mistakes, I was also glad that I got to experience building something like this. Coming into the class, I had vey little experience with tools, however, after building this and working studio hours I feel much more comfortable using tools and enjoyed this class becuase it taught me very useful skills. And while it didn't turn out perfect, I was still satisfied with my work and how I managed to adjust to my mistakes on the fly.