Cylindrical Plywood & Walnut Side Table
Not everyone is a fan of exposed plywood but I love it! The striped edge offers a great aesthetic in my opinion. This cylindrical table shows off the plywood beautifully, especially with its solid walnut top and bottom as a contrast. Here is how I made it
Materials Used:
18mm Plywood
American Black Walnut
Black Paint
Red Leather
Sandpaper
Tools Used:
Scissors
Clamps
To make perfect circles I used a trammel and a trim router. The pivot point was a dowel set 25cm away from the straight router bit. This will give me circles that are 50cm in diametre.
The router pivots around the dowel in the centre hole.
I slowly lowered the the depth of the cutter with each revolution.
Once I was past half way I used the jigsaw to cut the circle free.
I could then finish off the cut with the router. This just makes the circle easier to handle.
These will be the shelves so I added painters tape to the edges, this will help the wood glue adhere later. I then painted them black.
For the main body of the table I used plywood too. To make the most of the material I decided to create separate arcs rather than cutting one large horse shoe shape. I started by cutting a hoop shape from some MDF. Using the trammel made this nice and easy. The outside diametre is 50cm and the inside diametre is 45cm. This means the 'walls' of the hoop are 25mm.
I then cut a 35cm opening in the front of the hoop which gives me the horse shoe shape.
This opening will be the front of the table. It will create the opening to the shelves.
The I chose a random spot at the back to cut the piece in two. I made sure its wasn't central though because I want to be able overlap them later.
Then using the MDF templates as a guide to draw around I cut out the rough shapes with my jigsaw.
I needed 18 small arcs and 18 large arcs.
With them all cut out I could take the first 2 for each shelf section and attach the MDF with screws. This will be a guide for the flush trim bit. I could then flush trim them to match the MDF exactly.
This only needs to be done for 3 small arcs and 3 large arcs. These will be the first piece used on each level. The other pieces will use these ones as the guide.
The full circle shelves are used as a guide now. I placed the flushed up arcs onto the circle with no glue. I just needed to make sure they followed the right curve.
I could then apply wood glue on top of that layer and add the a large arc. As you can see in the images I alternated the placement of the large arc. This is so they over lap and form a finger joint. Its a lot like a brick wall pattern. The joints are much stronger this way.
The smaller arc gets added too and then screw hold them in place while the glue dries.
When the glue was dry its just a case of flush trimming the top layer to match the bottom layer. Then its very much rinse and repeat. I did this to build up 6 layers. I made another 2 sections this way which gave me 3 arcs curves each made up of 6 layers of plywood.
With the layers glued up and trimmed flush with the router it was time for gap filling. The plywood I used had quite a few voids so I mixed up some sawdust and wood glue to make a filler. I applied it to the voids, let it dry and then sanded it smooth and flush again.
Its much easier to add the finish now so I gave the 3 curved sections 3 coats of polyurethane.
Now its time to stack the sections up. To make it easier I first glued 1 curve section to each of the shelf pieces.
With the first layer added I used some F clamps to hold it in place while the glue dried. Before the glue has chance to dry I wipe away any that squeezed out.