Build a Curved Walnut Coffee Table

I’m going to be hopping back in the time machine this week to take a look at building this walnut coffee table that I made 10 years ago.  Plans available here.

It features curves on all four sides, and those curves follow down through curved front drawers on both sides. 

To get started, I went through my stack of walnut and found some boards for this project. Once I have all my boards out, I can start laying them out. Here, I’m laying out the boards for the sub top, which I picked out because they weren’t as desirable as some of the other boards. 

Now these boards are going to become the top and the shelf. I have a nice book match there for the top. 

The next step is running the boards through the planer. I don’t plane to the final thickness at this point. I usually do my milling in a few different stages, just to give the boards time to rest between millings. 

Next, I cut up some of my stock for the legs. Then I’ll square up one edge at the jointer and then plane them to thickness

I’m ripping the board for the sub top to width to remove any defects and get my panel closer to its final size. Then I’ll glue and clamp them up. 

This board’s going to give me the shelf. You can see I cut it in half and then created a slip match. After milling them to width, I can join them together. A quick pass over the jointer will true up the edges and give me a nice seamless glue joint. 

After cutting the breadboards, I can finalize the size of my panels. I’ll rip them to width, and then I will stack them on top of each other and cut them to length. I’ll also cut the breadboard ends to length. 

To get started with the breadboard joinery, I’ll put a quarter inch by quarter inch groove down the edge of each breadboard, then cut the shoulders. The breadboards that end up getting the dovetail will have shoulders on three edges, and the one that has tenon will have it on all four sides. 

Next, I’ll cut the shoulder on the panel, and with the dado blade, I’ll cut a tongue on the end of the panel. After that, I will work the tongue in the panel to clean it up and get it fitting into the groove of the bread board. 

Now I can cut the tenons on the end of the panels. 

I can transfer the locations of the tenons onto the breadboard, and then cut the mortises at the mortiser. 

After cutting the dovetail on the end of the breadboard, I can cut the legs to length. To transfer the dovetails to the top of the leg, I’ll just rest the sub top on top of the legs, and I can transfer the layout with my marking knife. 

I’ll scribe a line with my marking gauge set to the thickness of the dovetail, transfer my lines down, and then I’ll go to the drill press to remove most of the waste. And then I can get back to the bench and start chopping out all the waste. 

There’s the finished socket. Now I can try a little test fit, and it fits pretty well. 

After doing the other three legs, here’s what I have. 

Next up, I’m cutting the tenons on the end of the breadboard for the shelf. I’ll make the cuts to define the sides of the tenons first, and then I’ll come back and make the cheek cuts. At the bench, I can use some chisels to do a little cleanup. To transfer the layout from my tenons onto my legs, I cut a small scrap, flush that scrap up with the top of the leg, lock it into place, and then make a knife line to indicate where the top of the tenons will be. And then using my marking gauge, I can scribe a line that’ll make the side of the breadboard flush with the side of the leg. 

Now it’s really simple to put the tenons right on top of the leg, push them up against the scrap piece of wood, and then align them with my scribe line on the right. Once I get everything in place, I can trace around the tenons with my knife. Over at the mortiser, I remove the bulk of the waste from between the lines, and then I’ll clean up right to my lines with chisels. 

Now I can glue up the stock for the dividers, and then I can start cutting them to length. 

To join the dividers to the shelf and the sub top, I’ll be using my domino. On similar projects, I’ve done integral tenons or sliding dovetails here. I drew some indicator lines on the board, and then I can use my domino to make the mortises. When I’m using this piece of plywood, I make sure I’m always referencing off the same face. So on the table I have a front, and then on the scrap I have that marked with the blue piece of chalk. So I know the blue side of the template goes right against the front side of the table. That way I make sure that all my mortises line up correctly. 

Next, I can cut the mortises in the dividers. I’ll transfer my layout lines from my plywood template onto the dividers and then cut the mortise with the domino. 

I can put the sub top on, and I can finally get an idea of what the table’s going to look like. Everything seems to be fitting pretty well. So now I can permanently attach the breadboards to the shelf and sub top. 

For the shelf, I don’t want the holes for the pegs to be seen from the top, so I am doing a half blind pinning. I’m only drilling partially through the board so that the hole is only exposed on one side, which should be the bottom of the table. Next, I can make my pegs with my dowel plane. With a hand plane, I made a spring joint on the breadboard, and then I used a clamp to pull it together, and I can drill my holes through the tenons of my panel. 

I need to elongate the holes on the outside of tenons to allow the panel to expand and contract with the seasonal humidity changes. To do that, I’m using a chainsaw file. Now I can glue the breadboard onto the panel. With the breadboard fully seated and aligned, I can install the pegs. 

Next, I can add the curves to the panels. For the long sides, I used a template that I had already created from a previous project, which worked out great for this. And then I’ll use my oscillating belt sander to smooth and ease the curve. 

Next with my shop helper, I’ll lay out the curves on the breadboards. With the curves laid out, I can cut that out with a bandsaw, and then clean it up at the sander. Once I have those two curves established, I can transfer them to the other piece and roughly cut those out at the bandsaw. 

I can use the first board that I cut the curves on, and I can flush trim the other board to it, using it as a big template. And using the new board as a new template, I can make the curve on the other two sides of the original board. 

Next, I need to cut the dividers to the right width. Since the sub top and the shelf are now curved, this is going to be at an angle. I trace the angle on the end of the board, and then I transfer those lines to the face, and I roughly cut them out on the bandsaw, and then clean them right up to the line with a hand plane just to make sure that they’re perfectly flush with the sub top and the shelf. 

And now I can taper the legs from the inch and three quarter square at the top down to about an inch at the bottom. 

Now I can apply the finish. I figured it’d be a lot easier to pre-finish these pieces while they’re still flat and not attached to anything. Here I’m using a wiping varnish, General Finishes Arm-R-Seal. This is the semi gloss. 

For the glue up, I’m using epoxy. I’m also adding a little bit filler just to make it a little thicker and easier to work with. I decided to use epoxy for this glue up mainly because of the open time. If I had used regular wood glue, I would not have been able to get this thing together before the glue set. There’s a certain order that the table needs to be assembled in. First, the vertical dividers need to be attached to the shelf, and then the legs need to be attached to that shelf as well. And then the sub top can be attached to the vertical dividers and the legs. 

The next thing I have to do is make my top. I’m using a set of dividers to scribe around the table to give that offset. I wanted about an inch and a half overhang on all sides. Now the corners were a little weird since the legs are there. So I use the template for my curve finish out the curves to the corners. I do that for both the long curve and the small curve. It doesn’t really have to be super precise, I’m just looking to make something that looks like it was meant to be that way. 

Now I can cut out those curves, and then I’ll flush up to the line. After I sanded the top, I found that it was a little muddy and cloudy and not very clear. So I went over the whole piece with a card scraper, and that really brought out the grain and added so much more clarity to the piece. 

I can start finishing the top after I wiped it down with some mineral spirits to get rid of all the dust. 

Next, I can begin working on the drawers. I milled the stock for the drawer front, then cut them to size and started working on the dovetails. I’m doing that at the bandsaw with just a simple wedge. This makes it really easy, and it gives a very symmetrical pattern to your dovetails because you’re flipping them from side to side. At the bench, I can begin chopping to remove the waste. 

With the cleanup on the drawer size complete, I can now transfer my layout to my drawer front. And just like I did with the dovetail on the table, I drilled out the waste of the drill press, and then I started cleaning it up at the bench with chisels. 

Next I can start working on the drawer backs. I cut these pins first, after laying them out on the drawer back. Once I define the sides of the pins with the dovetail saw, I’ll come back with a coping saw and saw out the waste between the pins. 

After I clean up the pins, I can transfer my layout to my drawer sides. That’s really simple when you’re doing a drawer like this, and this is why I like to do pins first. You can stick that drawer back in between the two sides, and you have a little clamping jig to hold that drawer back in place while you transfer the lines. 

Once that joint is fit, I can work on the drawer bottom. I’m doing that real quick with the hand plane, just beveling three sides so they slide into the groove and the drawer itself. 

The next thing I’ll do is install my drawer stops. These are just some scrap pieces of the wood that are thin enough to slide under the drawer bottom. I’m using some CA glue to glue them into the case. With the drawer stops in place, I can slide the drawer in until it stops, and then I can transfer the curve front of the table to the drawer. At the bandsaw, I’ll cut the curve on the drawer front. Then I used my sander to sand that drawer flush to the opening. 

Now I can attach the top, using my dividers again to get the top in exactly the same position as it was when I scribed it. Then I can transfer the layout holes from my screws. Now here’s the scariest part of the whole project: drilling into the top. Make sure you’re drilling into the underside and make sure you’re not drilling all the way through. Using an offset screwdriver, I’ll install the screws and attach the top to the table.

It crazy how fast time flies! I built this table in July of 2014. It was a wedding present for our friends, Mel and Kevin, and it’s been really fun being able to see this table every time I’m here. A happy upcoming 10 year anniversary to them!

If you want to build your own table like this, I do have a full set of plans available on the website. Otherwise, thank you as always for reading along. I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on the coffee table, please feel free to leave a comment. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. And until next time, happy woodworking!