Jan Reksten, Small Round Occasional Table (FURNITURE 2025)

Photos:

Robin Cromer/Jan Reksten

Country

Australia

I designed this table, made of American Rock Maple (ARM), partly because of the challenge involved in making non-rectilinear furniture and also to test my skills in manufacturing my own veneers. The substrate of the table top is 18mm MDF cut to an octagon, to the eight outer edges of which I then glued pieces of ARM before cutting and sanding the whole top close to the final 560mm diameter dimension. The top is veneered on both sides with 1.9mm thick sheets of veneer that I cut using a skip-tooth bandsaw blade and brought to the correct thickness in the thicknesser. The veneers are first glued side to side with gel superglue and then to the MDF base in a veneer press using 2-part epoxy glue. I then sanded the outer edge of the table top back to its final dimension. The four rails, one of which is a drawer front, are cut as a sweep from a piece of ARM and are attached to the legs using haunched mortise and tenon joinery. The drawer sides are dovetailed at the rear and set into the rear of the drawer front using sliding dovetails. The drawer base is Camphor Laurel and the drawer slides are made of Tallowwood. I drew the entire table top and leg and rail joinery to full scale on paper and worked directly off the plans to achieve the correct shoulder tenon angles before gluing the piece up. The whole piece is fine-sanded and finished with Feast Watson satin lacquer mixed 50/50 with Fine Buffing Oil and then polished with woodworking wax.

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