smorgasbord
Member
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2022
- Messages
- 1,056
OK, the answer may be both.
Foureyes Furniture just posted this video:
Here's the sketch of the design:

The catch is that the top is a single wide slab of walnut. OK, with an epoxy river because, well, trendy. At 9:18 in the video, he says "the perimeter of the base will exactly match the perimeter of the top." He even goes to the process of trimming the top with a flush router bit with the bearing against the leg structure.
At that point, my wood movement hairs are standing up at the back of my neck. This is a 40" wide walnut slab after all.
At 20:02 into the video, he realizes this and so cuts a rabbet in the top of the leg structure to try to hide the effects of wood movement in the top causing misalignment with the leg structure. Ugh.
So, now he'll have a top that doesn't "exactly match" the base - but only on the two long edges, it'll match perfectly along the short edges.
This just seems like a bad design choice. Why make a modified Parsons Table only to have to add a detail to hide inevitable wood movement? The choice of a solid wood slab and Parsons table design just don't go hand in hand. Even worse than backwards dovetails, IMO.
Foureyes Furniture just posted this video:
Here's the sketch of the design:

The catch is that the top is a single wide slab of walnut. OK, with an epoxy river because, well, trendy. At 9:18 in the video, he says "the perimeter of the base will exactly match the perimeter of the top." He even goes to the process of trimming the top with a flush router bit with the bearing against the leg structure.
At that point, my wood movement hairs are standing up at the back of my neck. This is a 40" wide walnut slab after all.
At 20:02 into the video, he realizes this and so cuts a rabbet in the top of the leg structure to try to hide the effects of wood movement in the top causing misalignment with the leg structure. Ugh.
So, now he'll have a top that doesn't "exactly match" the base - but only on the two long edges, it'll match perfectly along the short edges.
This just seems like a bad design choice. Why make a modified Parsons Table only to have to add a detail to hide inevitable wood movement? The choice of a solid wood slab and Parsons table design just don't go hand in hand. Even worse than backwards dovetails, IMO.