Sculpted Walnut & Limba Tea Table Build // Woodworking

Hi, I'm Anna of All Trades. And last week, my friend Eric Curtis came out to design a sculpted table for the tiny house. We built it and it looks awesome. During that process, what I didn't have time to show you in last week's video were the myriad of different design changes. One of those being a square tabletop that we actually made and put a ton of work into. Rather than just scrap that, I wanted to come up with something that would incorporate all of the work that went into this into another useful project for the tiny house. Enter this week's project. Before I get started though, I would like to give a huge shout out and thanks to my sponsor, Skillshare, for sponsoring my project and this channel. I had chosen black limba for the sculpted tabletop because not only is it one of my favorite woods to work with hand tools, it's coloring and it's open grain structure make for a really nice match for walnut, which is what we decided to use for the leg stock for that round sculpted table we made last week. The original plan was to glue up and re-saw a piece of black limba to create two book-matched round pieces for the sculpted table. It's incredible, you can't even see the seam. We pulled down a slab, cut it up, and prepped it for the first glue up, and then I used the table saw to cut dead center on the new piece and establish a starter kerf around all four sides to act as a guide for the frame saw as we re-sawed it. All right, let me know when you're ready. Give the blade a little waxy here. The frame saw can be used by one person or two, but I was definitely grateful Eric was around for this cut because it was quite a big one. The frame saw cuts surprisingly fast because it's sharp and there's a low tooth count per inch, but it was still quite a workout, and I had to stop and lose my sweatshirt halfway through. Because we wanted to be sure to preserve as much thickness as possible for the re-sawing piece, I added domino joints to align the panels. This is a largely unnecessary step, but considering how thin the panel actually got at the end there, I was really thankful that I thought to add them at the beginning. One tip for when you're doing a crucial glue up like this one is to pick the show face and then use hammer taps once it's already in the clamps to ensure that it is glued straight along the entire face. With the panel out of the clamps, it was time to flatten it. It was too big for my surface planer, so I had to do it the old-fashioned way. I started with a scrub plane, which has a curved blade that scoops material and cuts quickly. Wood grain is weakest when cut across the fibers, so when a lot of material needs to be removed, cutting across the grain, or what's called traversing the grain, is the most efficient way to do it. The scrub plane removes material in a hurry, so it's also a good idea to stop and check your progress often. After I finished using the scrub plane, I use a jointer plane to finish truing the surface, which gets rid of the scoop mark from the scrub plane and ensures that the panel is flat along its surface. Even with the jointer plane, I stop and I check my progress with a straight edge, often marking the high spots with my pencil and then removing that pencil line with the plane. Despite my greatest efforts, the final thickness of the panel was a tad too thin for my liking. And since the grain of the wood runs perpendicular to the long end of the table, I added some walnut supports along the bottom. You'll notice that the middle hole in the supports is round and the fastener holes at either end are elongated. This will allow for seasonal wood expansion and contraction. Okay, so now I basically need to come up with a little design that's gonna work. I got a ton of flack on my last video for wasting so much leg material, so of course I saved it and decided I would see if I could use it again. Now I'm looking at this, and if I were to do an almost Asian-inspired leg design where it flares out like that, I think we might be able to not only make use of the leg scrap material, but also come up with a really cool design. So the next thing for me to decide is basically how tall I want it. And if I'm sitting in bed, I'd probably want it about right here. So I'm just going to make a little mark, cut it off, mock it up and see how it looks, and worst case scenario, I just throw that piece of wood in the fire. What I really like about these legs is the idea for the curve actually came because I was using a scrap cutoff piece from our table build, and so that's how that developed. But then I was looking at the live edge on one of these pieces, and I really wanted to mimic that on all the legs. ♪♪♪ Skillshare is an awesome online learning community that offers thousands of classes across various platforms. Premium memberships start at $10 a month, but the first 500 people to click the link below will get two months of free membership. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to high quality classes from experts working in their fields so you can improve your skills, unlock new opportunities, and do the work that you love. If this isn't the first video of mine you've watched, you know that I love learning all kinds of new things, and Skillshare is the perfect platform for me to be able to do that. 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