Nostalgia Table

Back when I was a wee (as wee as any 15 year old scrawny little fella can be) little freshman in high school, I ended up enrolled in the equivalent of Woodworking 2. Did I skip Woodworking 1 due to my talent? Test out of it? Nope... It was pretty much just the ineptitude of the guidance counselors, but hey, any port in a storm right? Woodworking 1 was for chuds.

Anyway, in this class we built this end table cabinet thing. More or less, it was my first real woodworking project. (I built a Nativity Scene when I was in middle school, but it's not the right season, so I'm just not going to count it).

Why am I posting about this? Mainly to show where I started, and to give you a sense of how far I've come.




The piece is built of almost exclusively red oak. There's a particle board kind of cheap backing to it, but I didn't take any pictures of that because cheap particle board backing is ugly.

It's worth noting that I have mentioned how I dislike staining wood. This is stained using the same finish that the woodwork in my parents' house is stained. Coincidentally, it's living in their basement. I want to point out that this is an example of a stained red oak now, because in the not to distant future ***subtle foreshadowing alert*** there may be good reason to having something to compare it to.

Also, this cabinet came with a door. I went with brushed brass fixtures (to match my parents' house's hardware), and substituted a glass door for the raised panel that the rest of the class did. I'm not too sure really why I went with a glass door instead of the raised panel, but I did.

Lastly, if you look at the edges of the top and of the door front, you'll notice they are rounded over. I did this using a simple round over bit on a router table. It softens the edges, but is another detail, like staining, that I'm not too fond of anymore.