The very first project

The first thing I made was simply a coffee table for my house, it was good fun to make and a great learning process. Unfortunately it wasn't very good! No matter, I don't mind making mistakes at all, after all, that's the best way to learn. What I don't like is repeating mistakes so I'll try and explain all the mistakes I made and you can see if I repeat them or not!

The table is 135cm x 70cm and stands at 45cm high. The idea behind it was to create something that could be used as both a coffee table and a dinner table as we have no room for both in the house! The wood is called Sapelli in Spanish which astonishingly doesn't seem to have a direct translation into English (very, very bizarre) but its basically mahogany.

It is an extremely hard wood which makes it a good choice for a table which is going to get alot of wear and tear. The down side is that it is a little hard to work with and very heavy. As you can see from the pictures it does have fantastic grain which adds a great visual effect to any furniture piece. Unfortunately that is where my mistakes began!

Mistakes/Lessons

1) Choose wood with the same grain! I may have managed to use all the same wood, but the grains were different and it makes the table look odd.

2) Buy wood that's straight! Yes, I managed to buy a piece of wood that was bowed which means that the table top is not smooth

3)Don't get the supplier to cut the wood exactly the right size, because they never do it right and then you get gaps in the finished piece! (Just get them to make it about the right size but slightly on the large size so I can change it later)

4) Drill loads of holes for wood plug and....................

5) Use clamps! I didn't have any so amazingly thought that by just pushing the pieces together I would get a good fit. (Funny now, but very very stupid) This prevents the piece ending up looking like a child put it together out of Lego (which is still a great toy by the way)

6) Don't sand by hand, takes faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar to long and you don't even get that good a finish.

7) Don't leave varnish to dry out it the open air, you get loads of dust in it (especially in a city like Madrid) which means you have to constantly sand it down and repeat it, which is time consuming and very very boring.

So, in summary............the coffee table is a expensive piece of crap. I look forward to the day when I will smash it into pieces and make something good out of the incredibly expensive timber. More to follow.............