Sofa Table

Building furniture is a serious undertaking.  This is a live edge sofa table that I built in the shop recently.  In my opinion, simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve in fine furniture because it often takes more work.  This piece is a prime example of painstaking simplicity.  I pulled this particular spruce slab from our stock (we milled it two years ago) after measuring and bisecting the grain of every slab until I found that this one was suitable for mitering at that particular spot so that the grain would continue around on every edge without interruption. You can see in the detail photo's that the live edge carries around the miter and even the grain on the beveled edge (back of table) continues without breaks. That's the sort of detail in woodworking that we don't always see at first. The jatoba (Brazilian cherry) base is seemingly simple as well, until you know that it was a single 2 inch thick board that I re-sawed in half.  I'm a big fan of modern tools, sanders and planers, but I tend to learn more about a piece if I work it by hand.  So I hand scraped and planed this piece.  The joints were also made with hand saws and chisels.  I also used three different joint methods on this piece depending on what type of pressure the joint would need to sustain.  I finished the piece off by tapping in some adjustable feet that both give a shadow line, and level the piece on uneven floors.