Bedside Table Build Process

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After lunch, I decided to re-flatten the planed sides of the two pieces that had warped and then feed them all through the bandsaw to make them square but a couple of millimetres oversize:

That didn't take long:

The three at the back have some knots that I'd been hoping would be cut off by the bandsaw but, while they look a lot better than they did, there's a bit left:

I'm not going to worry about that right now. They could easily be used as back legs and I could consider chopping the knots out and fitting a graving piece.

Having seen how much those first two planks moved, I'm expecting that I'll revert to the original plan of just making one of these bedside tables. Hopefully I'll manage to get four good legs out of the eight prepared blanks.

Following a comment from someone on the woodhaven forum, I thought it would be a good idea to try out my recently acquired moisture meter:

I'm not really sure what that tells me but perhaps after I've left the wood for a few weeks in the bedroom I can compare the results.

With that in mind, I decided to stack the wood up on top of my travel tool chest (which lives on top of one of the wardrobes):

The next few weeks are going to be fairly busy and, while I'll have the odd day here and there, I'm not expecting to make rapid progress with this project so there will be plenty of time for the leg planks to acclimatise. All being well, they'll still be straight-ish when I come to them in a few weeks' time (there's still some adjustment room thanks to sawing them oversize and not planing the last two sides), but if not I'll just have to decide what to do about it then.

In the meantime there is plenty more wood to dimension (the top, sides and drawer parts) so it's not as if I'll be searching around for some workshop jobs to do in the times when I do manage to get out there.

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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