Coffee Table

In my senior year of high school, I created an independent study on top of my regular course load. My independent study was furniture design. My main project for the year was to design and build a coffee table for my living room. I started off by researching different styles of furniture, different joinery techniques for furniture and different designs of tables. I researched different types of woods paired together and most importantly, their prices. This was still during the time period when COVID caused the price of wood to be heavily inflated. I wanted to make my table out of hardwood so it would not get nicked or scratched as easily as a softer wood like pine. I ended up deciding on using maple for the border and the main pieces out of cherry wood. I designed everything in CAD to make sure it looked good as well as ensure that I would have a set of plans to go off of. This also helped minimize the cost so I did not buy too much or too little wood. This was by far the largest scale project I had taken on to date. I wanted this to look professional and as if it had been made by a high quality craftsman or bought at a store. Since I had high expectations for myself and only having time to work on the project during my free time, it took around six months to make the table. The whole table was made without any metal fasteners and everything was cut to fit together perfectly. All the pieces were glued together and have special joinery techniques to make everything fit together seamlessly. The only hardware used on this table were the screws and metal inserts used to hold on the metal legs. This is one of my greatest achievements of woodworking and truly shows my mastery of using a workshop to its full potential.