John Whitrow, Hall Table (Furniture)

The table is constructed of Huon pine and jarrah, and is 710mm high, 710mm wide, and has a depth of 290mm. The design is my own, though you will see features of it in similar tables that have been published in Australian Wood Review and in Fine Woodworking. There is a story attached to the piece of Huon pine that I used. A friend gave it to me about four and a half years ago; he had purchased it during a visit to Tasmania about 10 years previously, and subsequently had used a different timber for the task for which he had purchased it. It sat in my garage for several years while I pondered what to construct. A table top seemed an appropriate choice to do justice to the wood but was insufficient for a complete table top. The publication of several articles on kumiko panels in Fine Woodworking and Australian Wood Review gave me the idea of incorporating two such panels in my design to make best use of the Huon pine. The legs were cut from jarrah floor joists from a room of a neighbour’s house that was undergoing redevelopment. Going by the age of this house, this timber was felled more than 100 years ago. The Huon pine piece was rough sawn, and measured approximately 1700 mm by 100 mm by 40 mm. A stroke with the plane found that it would be extremely difficult to work, it was highly susceptible to tear-out, and the grain completely reversed direction at each end . Also one end of the piece had enclosed a small branch which had partly rotted away, and required filling. The pine was cut down for a final thickness of 25 mm for the table top, and the ends used to make the three central blocks, each 80 mm by 80 mm. The ends were reversed in direction when the table was glued together so that the grain of the finished table was nominally unidirectional. The offcut piece from thicknessing the timber was used for the frame joining the legs to provide better stability of the table. As the difficult grain prevented it being used to make the kumiko pieces, they were cut from a small piece of Huon pine that I had purchased at an Adelaide Wood Show, and were finished to a thickness of 3 mm and a depth of 10 mm. The outer frame of each panel has a thickness of 5 mm but 2 mm is hidden by the rebate in the table top, so all pieces of the kumiko appear to have a uniform thickness. The kumiko are secured by 2 mm thick pieces of Huon pine tacked into the sides of the rebate, so the panels are removable should that ever be necessary for maintenance and cleaning. All the joints have been assembled using Bote Cote Epox-E-Glue, in preference to a PVA based glue, to give a long assembly time. A tiny ball of this glue, administered by the end of a toothpick, was used in each of the joints in the kumiko panels. The finish on the table is two coats of Cabot’s Danish Oil, used as a wiping varnish, except for the panels, which are left as raw timber. A 6 mm sheet of glass covers each panel.

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