Sofa Tables

I was contacted recently by a friend of my neighbor to build 2 - 55" sofa tables for her home. She had difficulty finding exactly what she wanted at various furniture stores or on-line, or anything not made in China

Finished tables in clients home- 55" x 11" x29"

Her main request was she wanted reclaimed wood. With some help from a couple of contacts, I located some reclaimed quarter sawn white oak from a guy in SE Indiana who tears down barns and not only sells the lumber, but produces some outstanding furniture from it. Most of what he has is 100 to 150 years old from barns and other buildings in the SE Indiana, Northern Kentucky, and the SW Ohio area.The other requirement was a marble, slate, or limestone top. The tops you see are marble from a vendor in Madison, IN.

A good part of this entire build was making the mortise and tenon joinery. The rails shown above are for the lower shelf, 4 required.

For reference, the legs are 2" square (not shown), and  the shelf slats here are 2 1/8" wide, all I needed to do was to get all of those in the opposite mortise at the same time and clamp it before one end or the other came apart. Took me more than one try, with a few choice words :)

Success! As usual, the second one went together a lot quicker than the first

The finish on the wood is two coats of Tried & True Danish Oil. This really brought out the character of this wood. I really enjoyed working with this reclaimed lumber. Hard to explain but this reclaimed white oak seem to cut a lot easier than the kiln dried material I am used to and the "defects", nail holes, worm tracks, knots etc, made it look all that much better.

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