I've volunteered for the job of constructing the saloon table for Ceol Mor, and I decided to post progresive pictures, a la Ed Harrow.

A little background on materials, the table will have two folding leaves with some special maple veneered to the tops. At my parents' old home in Hampstead, NH, there was a noble old maple tree which shaded the whole house in summer. I don't know how old the tree was, but the house was 250+ years and the maple looked about the same. The old road next to the house was eventually paved, which over the course of many years killed off the tree, which eventually had to be taken down. Well, Ross saved some wood from the tree and that's what is going on this table.

Design for the table is by myself using Pro/Engineer and many rounds of feedback from Ross and Lois. I've put a couple pictures (screenshots) of some early versions of the design. The design is much more sophisticated now, but I don't have good screenshots. table is fairly standard yacht fashion, a center "box" as the spine wit internal storage and structural support. Forward end of table mounts to bulkhead, aft portion stands on a sturdy leg bolted to the cabin sole. Optional pole running from end of table to ceiling to be determined after installation.

All pictures are available in this photopoint album:
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/Album...147&a=13607730

Shown are Day 1 and Day 2 of actual construction. Design time including revisions was about 12 hours prior to buying any wood. All "Days" of work not to be considered sequential - think evenings and weekends!

Day 1: Resaw maple pieces into bookmatched veneers. Ripped wavy original boards down to 6.125" (the most my bandsaw can handle) and resawed using a curved fence mounted to bandsaw table. Curved fence allows adjustments for bandsaw tendency to pull to one side or another. A nice sharp 3/8 blade (biggest I could find) made fairly short work of the job. Sanded resultant bookmatched leaves down to just shy of 1/4" thick. Delighted to discover tiger and flame figuring in addition to the spalting we already knew about. Now have 2 sets bookmatched veneers, one for each leaf.

Day 2: Finish sanding maple. Lots and lots of passes through Performax sander. Pass all boards through on each thickness setting to ensure uniformity. Lay out plywood bits and cut. Using a solid modeling program makes all of the measurements so easy, I feel like I'm cheating. That 12 hours design time is saving me scads of screwing-up-that-clearance time in the shop. Cut cutouts and angled bits on box sides. Using a tracing router and straightedges makes this far too easy, as well.

Next time: Gluing up the veneer tops and working with the solid wood bits (legs, joinery).