Plywood coffee table

[NL-mikkla]

Here’s the story of my current project

It was my best friend’s birthday and I gave him a voucher for a table.
He could basically choose any table to his liking and I would make that for him, always a risky present
My idea was a dining table, but he came up with this coffee table.

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Really nice and challenging design.
I really like furniture out of plywood.
I like the looks of all those little stripes etc.

Anyway, I had no idea how to start.
Thought it would be best to make a routerjig and then route a certain amount of “rings”  and glue them together.
First tried to cut out a ring from wood using the PS420 Carvex circulair thing.

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That didn’t work, the ring looks oke, but is way to thin to act as a jig

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By chance I could buy 80 sheets of cut off’s  plywood 40mm thick.
They were still large enough to cut out the rings, and I could make a good deal.

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My friend knows his way around with autocad and he made a small program to cut the router jig
I then contact our local machine shop and had the rings made in some sort of plastic.

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This worked! By now I was so impressed with the design I wanted one table for myself.
I had enough wood for three tables so started routing.
I can tell you, repeating work like this makes me crazy!!

 

[duburban]

thats a job for a cnc machine if i've ever seen one. How did the assembly go? What was the  method to keep those parts in perfect alignment?

 

[teocaf]

Is it necessary to contact the designer Chris Jamison of Plywood Office and ask him permission to copy his design outright and make multiple copies of it?  Does anyone know what the procedure is in these types of situations?

 

[tiralie]

Is it necessary to contact the designer Chris Jamison of Plywood Office and ask him permission to copy his design outright and make multiple copies of it?  Does anyone know what the procedure is in these types of situations?

My understanding is that by copying you are violating the original makers copyright, at least as it pertains to copyright law in NA.
If you are planning on selling these copies or using them for commercial purposes, then it's a bigger problem than just a one off.
If you are copying one for a gift etc. then it wouldn't hurt to contact the maker as a courtesy. I assume Most designers will give you permission for one off.
I am sure there a lawyers here who can correct me if I'm incorrect.
Tim

 

[NL-mikkla]

Something went wrong while making this thread and not all pics are there.
I will finish the thread next week, although the project is still not finished I have more pics than shown

Was not ment to be offensive to any designer, I'm just making one off for a friend?
If this is the way this thread is heading I'll remove it.

 

[woodguy7]

Dont remove it.  The table looks really cool & i for 1 would love to see some build pics.

 

[NL-mikkla]

@durburban,
I thought of letting the rings cut by the CNC guy I know.
They charged about 350€ only for the CNC job, so I had to buy the wood also.
All in all this table would cost me around 500€ on materials and machining

Despite the money, I'am an amateur and like to work on wood.
If I had the rings made it would be like assembling an Ikea table....
So I decided to put a lotta love and effort in it  [embarassed]

Oke, so I had the router jig made from Nylon.
I also had the outer ring and inner piece made for router stabilitly.
I tried several options, one was to roughly cut out the size and trim route the ring

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That didn't work, I couldn't clamp the router piece the way I liked it
So I decided to cut out the ring from the sheet as a whole

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That worked oke, but was hard on the router and bits.
I actually overheated my old Dewalt on this job, luckely I could now justify the OF1400!

Here's one ring with the jig still attached, a second ring behind the jigged ring

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After this it was just a mindset, at the end I could do almost three rings per hour!
I need at least 44.....I sometimes stopped for a few weeks because this this repetitve work made me crazy

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[NL-mikkla]

It also justified to buy the longlife filter bag, I almost went broke on paper filter bags  [mad]
Tried to re-use them by emptying them in the bin.
Ending up with most of the times a torn paper bag and the workshop completley coverd in dust....

Anyway, I recentley picked up the project again, and are now in the assembly fase.
Here a testfit with screwing them together and trying the BS105 to see if I could get the result I wanted

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The result was to my liking, you can see how this will turn out, I think pretty cool!

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I was not satisfied with the allignment and the screwing
So I pulled out the Bessey systainer and came up with this

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The allignment is near to perfection now
Not shown inpicture is that I used two large clamps to pull the ring down, the bessey's are for the horizontal allignment.

Few bumps still to come :

My two large clamps to hold the rings vertically will to short by the next rings
Options, throw some weight on it, buy new larger clamps, been looking at the Bessey Vario Corpus.

How do I sand the inner rings?
For now my best idea would be to make a PVC tube that can be mounted in the drill.
This PVC pipe will have velcro on the outside so I can apply sanding paper on it
I any of you have a better idea, please!!!!!!!!!!!

No idea how to make the legs, the sheets of wood I have are not wide enough to make a seperate ring with the legs from one peice.
I now think this would something for the domino!

 

[Wenyce]

Im no pro, but the RO 90 seems like it'll fit in there for the top and bottom ( or a similar sized sander)? as for the sides on the inside, maybe grabbing a couple of those inner cutouts, cut off about 4/5 off one end and now you got a sanding pad with just about the same profile as the inner sides of your table, add velcro and the sanding pads and sand away. if that makes any sense?

 

[NL-mikkla]

Could be a great idea, thanks you!
I also like the idea of re-using the cutouts.

Is the RO90 that low?? , the DTS400 doesn't fit

 

[NL-mikkla]

Found out that a hand plane was the right tool, table is ready!
Lot happened in between ask and I lost the build pictures....
Here's the result

 

[rst]

Great looking table!  [tongue]

 

[Michael Kellough]

Very impressive!

 

[Kev]

I really like that - nice work [wink]

 

[eddomak]

That looks awesome!

Curiosity begs me to ask - what happened to all the "doughnut holes"? Did you use them to make an even smaller version of your design?  [wink]

 

[Kev]

That looks awesome!

Curiosity begs me to ask - what happened to all the "doughnut holes"? Did you use them to make an even smaller version of your design?  [wink]

[member=26367]eddomak[/member]

LoL .. if I ever make one of these, the cavity will be the size and shape of a skateboard deck !! [wink]

 

[bkharman]

Love it! 

How are the legs attached?  I am a fan of the plywood sandwich.... Here is a drawer front i made for my CMS cabinet.

Great job man!!

Cheers.  Bryan.

 

[Kev]

Love it! 

How are the legs attached?  I am a fan of the plywood sandwich.... Here is a drawer front i made for my CMS cabinet.

Great job man!!

Cheers.  Bryan.

[member=21412]bkharman[/member]

There's a mob in SF Cali that make guitars out of old skateboards (ply) .. I reckon you'd love them.
http://www.prismaguitars.com

 

[rvieceli]

[member=13058]Kev[/member] [member=21412]bkharman[/member]

This guy uses a lot of recycled skateboard decks in interesting ways as well. Here's a link to his Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/dangarciastone/

Ron

 

[Billedis]

[member=27355]NL-mikkla[/member] that is beautiful.  What did you use to fill the voids in ply?  Also what finish.  Thank you for posting.  Bill