Cherry End Tables, Completion

On this project, I used floating tenon joints for most of the assembly. A floating tenon is a varition on the mortise-and-tenon joint. Instead of cutting a mortise in one piece, and a matching tenon on the other, both pieces have matching mortises. Then a separate loose tenon is made and cut to length to fit between the parts. This approach is, in my opinion, faster and just as strong. For this project it is also much, much simpler because cutting tenons on the curved skirt pieces would have been very difficult.

This photo shows one of the floating tenon joints betweent as leg and the spreader sub-assembly.


Glue up for this project was trickly, and had to be done in several stages. The exact sequence had to be determined by doing a dry-fit of all the parts and noting how it all went together.

The leg sub-assembly, consiting of all four legs, the spreaders and the skirts, where glued up, but each circular top and shelf were attached with screws, through slots to allow for expansion and contraction of the slabs.

The slabs were left off during finishing and sealed on all sides, to reduce moistiure changes through the seasons. After everything was completely finished, the slabs were attached. And here's how they turned out.