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When I build a reproduction, I try to remain as faithful as I can to the construction of the original – even if my modern brain says it’s not ideal.
The original builder of this early 18th-century table used several techniques that wouldn’t fly in a modern shop. For one: The bottom of the drawer is simply nailed on to the drawer sides – no groove. And the solid wood tabletop is attached to the base using wooden pegs driven in through the top.
When I saw this table at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, I observed how the top was split – most likely because of the pegs. (You can see a slideshow from my trip here.) The top wants to move; the pegs want it to stay put. So one of four things happen:
1. Nothing. The wood movement isn’t enough to bust anything apart.
2. The top splits.
3. The pegs break.
4. The table base is pulled apart (a rare thing in surviving tables).
In this case, the top split. Now, I could have attached the top using metal clips or wooden buttons – both of those techniques would have allowed the top to expand and contract freely. And I could have then added some false pegs to the top so it still looked like the original.
But that doesn’t make me happy. It’s the same reason I left the marks from the fore plane on the underside of the tabletop and drawer bottom. That texture is a reminder of how this was built.
Plus, I figure that if the original survived more than 300 years, I should give that technique some respect. The video above shows how I attached the top to this table using a brace-and-bit, oak pegs and a hammer.
— Christopher Schwarz
Notes on this Table
This table will be featured in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine and is one of the plans in the forthcoming book “Furniture in the Southern Style” (Popular Woodworking). You can pre-order this book for less than $20 at ShopWoodworking.com. If you like period furniture, you are going to want this book. Period.
P.S. You can download the music from this video from the Free Music Archive.
