Sofa Server Table
Back in early 2017, I made a little pine table that slid into the couch to provide a good drinks-and-stuff surface since there was only an end table at one end of the couch. It was my first attempt at mortise and tenon joinery and, while it went together fairly well, I didn’t quite trust the joint, so I reinforced it with screws. It’s help up amazing well, both for “drinks and stuff” and 14-pound cats who, as is their way, assumed the table was for them.
But my woodworking skill shave improved since then (or so I like to think), so it was time for an upgrade.
I saw a plan that I liked in the May 2021 issue of Wood Magazine and thought I’d give it a go. It called for walnut and white oak, which is a nice contrasting combination of woods. I did make two changes to the plan, but I’ll cover those later.
First it was time to get the right lumber. I had some walnut for most of the parts, but I didn’t have any white oak, so I headed to Good Woods Lumber, my closest local lumber mill, and picked up a couple more walnut boards and some really nice quartersawn pieces of white oak.
Most of what I get from Good Woods is rough sawn lumber so I need to mill it down to the size I need for the project. Optimally, this is done on a jointer and a thickness planer, but since I don’t have a jointer, I make due with just using the planer and a planer sled.
I use the sled and some shims to flatten one side of the board, then run the other side through without the sled. After that, I use my sled to straight line rip one edge. My sled is designed to be used for both of those tasks, so I can fairly easily mill up anything up to four feet in length with it.
Once everything was milled, I needed to glue three white oak boards together to form the table top. I had milled four boards so I’d have some different combinations to choose from and would have a better chance of matching the color and grain for all four boards.
So I got them arranged in a way that matched the grain the best I could, which involved ripping one on an angle so the grain was parallel with the edges of the board (there’s a jig for that), and then glued and clamped them up to create my tabletop.
When it was dry, I used the bandsaw to cut a curved edge on the front and back and then (in one of the changes) added a small chamfer to the underside of the top to give it a lighter look… or at least a more interesting one.
I cut all my walnut pieces to length. Here’s where I should not that one of the changes I made to the plans was to add a cross piece to the top support. The table top is about 15 inches wide and the single support in the plans is 2 3/4 inches wide. I didn’t feel comfortable having that much overhang on either side of the main support, especially since that was all with the grain, so the cross piece I added (which I think is called a batten) gives some extra support to the edges of the table top plus it will prevent the table top from cupping or twisting with seasonal wood movement.
So after the pieces were cut to length, I started to work on making the notches for the lap joints that would hold everything together. I put my stacked dado blade in the table saw and made multiple passes to cut the 90-degree dados in the four pieces for the bottom and top. That created a joint that would fit together nicely as shown below.
Then I cut angled dados at 15 degrees on the long base board and the long top board to accept the two uprights. I cut both of the uprights to length, cutting the ends at a matching 15 degree angle.
Before I did too much of the final assembly, I applied as much of the finish as was practical because there were some areas that would be tougher to get to once the assembly was completed. Applying the finish is one of my favorite parts because the finish can really bring out the beauty of the wood. I always get a mental “Oh wow!” reaction. You can see the difference in the picture; the top has a single coat of garnet shellac on it. The sides don’t have anything at that point.
Once I had all the pre-assembly finishing done, I did the glued up assembly and clamped the glue joints in place. The angled dados and the angled ends of the supports kept the tops and bottoms parallel, but I double-checked that anyway just to make sure. The only parts I hadn’t applied a finish to at this point were the outsides of the supports. I didn’t want to apply that until after I’d clamped things together so as not to harm the finish.
Once the glue was dry, I applied the finish to the outsides… but forgot that I still needed to drill holes in the tops and bottoms of the supports so I could insert dowels into the holes, presumably for some added joint strength. The problem I created was that once I drilled the holes, I needed to cut and sand the dowels flush to the supports… which would probably end up harming the finish.
So I opted to make the dowels a design element instead of simply a structural element. I rounded the ends of them and left them about 1/8″ proud of the surface. It was easy enough to apply a few coats of shellac with a small paintbrush and it ended up looking pretty nice, I think.
The finishes that I used for the table differed on the top and bottom. The base got six coats of garnet shellac that I mixed to a 1.5 pound cut, which is very thin. Each coat dries in just a couple minutes. I sanded with 320-grit sandpaper after the 3rd coat. After the 6th coat was dry, I applied paste wax using #0000 steel wool and then buffed it with a paper towel followed by some cotton cloth.
The table top was a little more involved. White oak has a very open grain, so I used a grain filler (Goodfilla water based grain filler from Woodcraft). I applied it, let it dry, sanded it off, applied another coat, let it dry, and sanded it off again. At that point, the grain was mostly filled in and the surface felt smooth enough (sanded to 320-grit). I then applied 6 coats of a Platina shellac (also a 1.5-pound cut) and then applied three coats of Minwax wipe-on polyurethane (clear satin). I followed that up with paste wax applied with #0000 steel wool and then buffed it smooth with paper towels and cotton cloth.
Glamour shots below!
