The coffee table

What I was starting with, after cutting off
about 17" from one end for a leg.

There's something about simply having that big slab of wood around. It's all about the possibilities. It's also a little scary, especially when you walk in the door carrying it and you tell your wife what you paid for it, and what your plan is.

Having never done anything like it before, I was definitely nervous. I didn't want to screw anything up and I knew I was going to need a lot of assistance, especially with how to use both power and hand tools. Having my father-in-law show me every step before I did it was invaluable. In some cases, he'd step in and do things (like cleaning up some of the mortises with a chisel. I was so slow with the chisel!) in the interest of saving time. I spent many weekends working on this table, and my father-in-law would basically have to stop what he was doing each time I finished a step.

First things first: the slab was not flat and was seriously cupped. If I was going to have anything worth its salt I was going to have to make this thing flat. My father-in-law started me off with hand planing the slab leg I'd cut off.

I was pretty nervous using a router for the first time.
However my focus was on going nice and
slow so I didn't make any mistakes.

Hand planing was hard work, but it did the trick. Next I had to do something about the crack, or "check", in the leg, as well as the long one in the table top. Nakashima is well known for his use of "butterfly keys", which are essentially structural elements meant to stabilize cracks or any other areas in wood that may need strengthening. They keep cracks from getting worse. I chose to make mine from gaboon ebony, which is a very hard, dark, strong wood from Africa. So, I had to use a router in order to make the mortises for these butterfly keys. A router? Yep. I'd never used one of those either. Time to practice. Oh yeah, I'd also have to cut the keys themselves using a bandsaw. I'd never used one of those either!

The first thing I ever routed.
It was pretty rough.

So it was time to rout my first real mortise for a butterfly key. Luckily after squaring it up with a chisel it turned out just fine. Next it was a matter of positioning and placing two butterfly keys in the actual table top. I got those in and it was time to focus on joining that slab leg to the underside of the table top. I researched and found how Nakashima handled joints like this. It was usually mortise and tenon joinery, with bit of math mixed in. I figured out how many tenons I should make and their lengths and widths, then used the bandsaw and a handsaw to cut them. My father-in-law helped me set up a jig to rout a rabbet on the underside of the top because I'd chosen not to flatten the bottom in order to preserve some of the thickness of the slab. Then I used the same jig to help me rout the mortises.

After some fine tuning of the mortises with a chisel, I lined the mortises with epoxy and tapped the slab leg home. It ended up going in perfectly square!
I bought some walnut leg blanks to turn two tapered legs for the other side of the table. I went as far as to trace a Nakashima leg in Adobe Illustrator so I could make my legs the same exact dimensions. After some instruction on the lathe from my father-in-law, I jumped right in and turned the legs. I was really happy with the result! I tapped a bolt into the legs and fashioned some steel plates to serve as a mount for them and finally screwed them in place. The table was really coming together now. All that was left was more sanding and the finish.

The table assembled, before
final sanding and finishing.

I went with a natural tung oil finish, which proved to be a long process in and of itself. The first coat went on with a 50/50 mix with mineral spirits. Each successive coat was 100% tung oil. I've since learned that not even at Nakashima do they use a 100% tung oil finish because it takes so long to dry and cure. Luckily everything really came together towards the end of the project. Second to the table being done, the most rewarding part was seeing the table together, with the joints being solid and square. A check with a level showed that the top was dead-on too. I couldn't have been more satisfied. And so, it was time to take this table home. It was something to really be proud of. Would I have done a thing or two differently on it? Maybe. But it was my first woodworking project and it surpassed anything I imagined when I started.

I really love the satin-like finish. I am not a fan of poly finishes.
I hate when a piece of furniture looks like its coated in plastic
and soaking wet all the time!

A look at the finished top.