Jenny's Cat Table
Jenny's cat Tippin had a problem. She liked to sit on the window ledge in Jenny's apartment, but she was getting so fat that she kept falling off. Jenny asked me if I could make some kind of platform next to the window for Tippin so she could enjoy the view. I decided we'd take it a little further and make a table.
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I designed it, determined how much wood I needed and headed to Lumber Liquidators. They had a discount on Brazilian Walnut and I decided I wanted to try using it for Jenny's table. It was not a huge mistake, but after building Jenny's table and Ben's toy box with Brazilian Walnut, I won't use it again.
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I'm going to get my issues with Brazilian Walnut out of the way and not whine about it anymore:
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Brazilian Walnut is very hard; it has a Janko rating of 3680. The Brazilian Cherry I work with is plenty hard enough at 2600. The extreme hardness means broken drills, dulled saws and router bits, and generally a pain to work with.
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It's heavy, once the table was together, it was quite heavy making moving it a chore.
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It's more expensive than the Brazilian Cherry which is easier to work with and yields just as nice a finished product.
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Finally, the dust created by working with Brazilian Walnut turned my hair pink.
Miller Dowels
Miller dowels are a tapered dowel, installed using a matching tapered drill bit, that provide a tight joint by forcing the wood together as the dowel is hammered down. I used these dowels on the top of the table to secure the top to the frame. For this table, I used walnut dowels to match the wood color as much as possible. The dowel leaves an obvious circle of wood in the top, but I decided I'd consider this a unique design technique instead of me being lazy and cheap (I could have made the top a double thickness so that no dowels were visible).
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I did learn something I should have known to start with. After the dowel installation is complete and the glue dries, you have to cut and sand the excess dowel to match the level the top. I used a power sander to do this and didn't notice until I went too far that I was putting dents in the top of the table where the dowels went in. The dents are only noticeable when the light is right, but they are there. Since then, I've done a couple of things to make sure I don't do that again.
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First, I use a hand miter saw to cut off most of the dowel. I have some old Pampered Chef cutting sheets that Nancy gave me that I lay next to the dowel and the slide the saw on top of the sheet as I cut the dowel. This way I don't scar the table. Next, when I sand off the remaining dowel, I keep the sander fully on the table so that the sanding depth stays at the level of the table. When I initially sanded off the dowels in this table, I angled the sander toward the dowel to speed up the process. That's how I managed to dent the table top.
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I typically use the Mini-x Miller dowels for the furniture I build. There are two larger sizes of Miller dowels, but I have only used the next size larger once when I was building Alexandria's dresser.
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A final note, Miller dowels are expensive; they're around a quarter each for the mini-x. If there is an alternative jointing method I can use, I use that. I primarily use these only for table tops and drawer faces, and the occasional joint that much easier if I use a Miller dowel.
Drawer Rails
After building wooden drawer rails for my chess table, I have not tried to build them again. I can buy much better working rails from Amazon, and I don't have to fight with the wooden one to get them to operate smoothly.
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Since I built Jenny's table, I have started to use "soft close" rails. Those rails are Nancy's preference, and I like them as well. They are not a lot more expensive than standard rails.
Shoe Racks
Jenny and I kind of backed into the design of the table by starting with the top. That was the important part. We needed a table that was adequate for a fat cat's butt.
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The decision to include a couple of drawers in the design was easy. Drawers are a natural component of the table like this, however, the area below the drawers was a little harder to nail down. I could put in more drawers, cupboards, shelves, or nothing.
The bottom turned out to be another decision based on need. Jenny needed a shoe rack and the space below the drawers could be used for two shelves for shoes. I gave the shelves a couple of inches of slope down from the front to give them the look of shelves with a specific purpose.
Tippin Approved of the Table
After some coaxing with cat treats, Tippin decided to get up on the table and check out the view.
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This picture does a pretty good job of showing why that cat needed a bigger area than the window ledge to place her substantial butt.
