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Darrell Peart's Aurora Sofa Table

32449 Views 45 Replies 21 Participants Last post by CaptainSkully, Feb 22, 2010

CaptainSkully

Discussion Starter · Sep 2, 2009

3

In the Beginning...

This is my most ambitious project to date. I'm going to make a Greene & Greene sofa table that closely follows the design of premier G&G LJ Darrell Peart. I pinged him the other day, and he sent me to American Furniture Design Co. to buy plans. As you can see, they're not identical to the one made by Marc in Darrell's class at William Ng's woodworking school.

American Furniture's Version:

TheWoodWhisperer's Version:

What I plan to do is to take the plans I bought, and convert them into a sofa table, using the same design features as TheWoodWhisperer's table built in Darrell's class.

I recently bought 30 board feet of old growth Honduran Mahogany off of CraigsList. The boards are 18" wide, more than enough for a solid piece for my sofa table top. I will be following the directions in Darrell's book, "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Woodshop"' that I got at the Gamble House, to make the breadboard ends, splines, indents, cloud lifts, etc.

To give it scale, that's my planer and sawhorses behind the boards.

Wish me luck! It's going to take awhile for this blog. I need to finish up some previous projects. BTW, according to AFD Co. this is an intermediate project. I'd hate to see advanced…

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1 - 20 of 46 Posts

Scarcraig01

· #2 · Sep 2, 2009

2

CaptainSkully said:
In the Beginning...

This is my most ambitious project to date. I'm going to make a Greene & Greene sofa table that closely follows the design of premier G&G LJ Darrell Peart. I pinged him the other day, and he sent me to American Furniture Design Co. to buy plans. As you can see, they're not identical to the one made by Marc in Darrell's class at William Ng's woodworking school.

American Furniture's Version:

TheWoodWhisperer's Version:

What I plan to do is to take the plans I bought, and convert them into a sofa table, using the same design features as TheWoodWhisperer's table built in Darrell's class.

I recently bought 30 board feet of old growth Honduran Mahogany off of CraigsList. The boards are 18" wide, more than enough for a solid piece for my sofa table top. I will be following the directions in Darrell's book, "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Woodshop"' that I got at the Gamble House, to make the breadboard ends, splines, indents, cloud lifts, etc.

To give it scale, that's my planer and sawhorses behind the boards.

Wish me luck! It's going to take awhile for this blog. I need to finish up some previous projects. BTW, according to AFD Co. this is an intermediate project. I'd hate to see advanced…

Sounds great, I look forward to following your progress. Very nice mahogany board, looks like it might be african though??

Honduran is usually darker:

It doesn't really matter… as long as you can finish the project with the pieces you have. I did a mahogany barrister set once from Honduran that I bought at an auction and didn't have enough to finish, so I went to my dealer and got more. He assured me that what I was buying was Honduran and would darken in time to match the rest. Its been almost 2 years now and it doesn't match, and I suspect it never will! Oh well live and learn…

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edreher

· #3 · Sep 2, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
In the Beginning...

This is my most ambitious project to date. I'm going to make a Greene & Greene sofa table that closely follows the design of premier G&G LJ Darrell Peart. I pinged him the other day, and he sent me to American Furniture Design Co. to buy plans. As you can see, they're not identical to the one made by Marc in Darrell's class at William Ng's woodworking school.

American Furniture's Version:

TheWoodWhisperer's Version:

What I plan to do is to take the plans I bought, and convert them into a sofa table, using the same design features as TheWoodWhisperer's table built in Darrell's class.

I recently bought 30 board feet of old growth Honduran Mahogany off of CraigsList. The boards are 18" wide, more than enough for a solid piece for my sofa table top. I will be following the directions in Darrell's book, "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Woodshop"' that I got at the Gamble House, to make the breadboard ends, splines, indents, cloud lifts, etc.

To give it scale, that's my planer and sawhorses behind the boards.

Wish me luck! It's going to take awhile for this blog. I need to finish up some previous projects. BTW, according to AFD Co. this is an intermediate project. I'd hate to see advanced…

That is a beautiful design.

Finish, schminisch. Projects are meant to be started.

matt1970

· #4 · Sep 2, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
In the Beginning...

This is my most ambitious project to date. I'm going to make a Greene & Greene sofa table that closely follows the design of premier G&G LJ Darrell Peart. I pinged him the other day, and he sent me to American Furniture Design Co. to buy plans. As you can see, they're not identical to the one made by Marc in Darrell's class at William Ng's woodworking school.

American Furniture's Version:

TheWoodWhisperer's Version:

What I plan to do is to take the plans I bought, and convert them into a sofa table, using the same design features as TheWoodWhisperer's table built in Darrell's class.

I recently bought 30 board feet of old growth Honduran Mahogany off of CraigsList. The boards are 18" wide, more than enough for a solid piece for my sofa table top. I will be following the directions in Darrell's book, "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Woodshop"' that I got at the Gamble House, to make the breadboard ends, splines, indents, cloud lifts, etc.

To give it scale, that's my planer and sawhorses behind the boards.

Wish me luck! It's going to take awhile for this blog. I need to finish up some previous projects. BTW, according to AFD Co. this is an intermediate project. I'd hate to see advanced…

very nice!

a1Jim

· #5 · Sep 2, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
In the Beginning...

This is my most ambitious project to date. I'm going to make a Greene & Greene sofa table that closely follows the design of premier G&G LJ Darrell Peart. I pinged him the other day, and he sent me to American Furniture Design Co. to buy plans. As you can see, they're not identical to the one made by Marc in Darrell's class at William Ng's woodworking school.

American Furniture's Version:

TheWoodWhisperer's Version:

What I plan to do is to take the plans I bought, and convert them into a sofa table, using the same design features as TheWoodWhisperer's table built in Darrell's class.

I recently bought 30 board feet of old growth Honduran Mahogany off of CraigsList. The boards are 18" wide, more than enough for a solid piece for my sofa table top. I will be following the directions in Darrell's book, "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Woodshop"' that I got at the Gamble House, to make the breadboard ends, splines, indents, cloud lifts, etc.

To give it scale, that's my planer and sawhorses behind the boards.

Wish me luck! It's going to take awhile for this blog. I need to finish up some previous projects. BTW, according to AFD Co. this is an intermediate project. I'd hate to see advanced…

Looks like a wonderful project ,can't wait to see you progress.

Beginningwoodworker

· #6 · Sep 2, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
In the Beginning...

This is my most ambitious project to date. I'm going to make a Greene & Greene sofa table that closely follows the design of premier G&G LJ Darrell Peart. I pinged him the other day, and he sent me to American Furniture Design Co. to buy plans. As you can see, they're not identical to the one made by Marc in Darrell's class at William Ng's woodworking school.

American Furniture's Version:

TheWoodWhisperer's Version:

What I plan to do is to take the plans I bought, and convert them into a sofa table, using the same design features as TheWoodWhisperer's table built in Darrell's class.

I recently bought 30 board feet of old growth Honduran Mahogany off of CraigsList. The boards are 18" wide, more than enough for a solid piece for my sofa table top. I will be following the directions in Darrell's book, "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Woodshop"' that I got at the Gamble House, to make the breadboard ends, splines, indents, cloud lifts, etc.

To give it scale, that's my planer and sawhorses behind the boards.

Wish me luck! It's going to take awhile for this blog. I need to finish up some previous projects. BTW, according to AFD Co. this is an intermediate project. I'd hate to see advanced…

This is going to be a wonderful project!

CaptainSkully

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 4, 2009

Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

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Ozzy1812

· #8 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

This looks really good. The proportions look good. I noticed that you are using the same indents on the legs that Darrell has used before. I used the jig that is used in the the book and they came out pretty good. By the way, I have read and used Darrell's book so much I may have to get another one since I am wearing this one out. LOL. Great Job on the design as usual. Ed. E.

jlsmith5963

· #9 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

Are you aware of the photo match function in Sketchup? There are several tutorials available (for a start you might try this basic one and also this one ) you could confirm the proportions of your AutoCAD version using Peart's photo and photo match (you can import your AutoCAD dwg into Sketchup for direct a comparsion). In the future you might want to use Skecthup's photo match at the start of the process to establish all the key proportions and then export to AutoCAD to complete the dwgs or you could model the whole project in Sketchup.

MikeGager

· #10 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

i threw together a quick sketchup model of the table using your dimensions and assuming a 16" depth and it looks pretty good. i used 4" over hang on each side and 2" legs just going off a rough scale of your drawing (by holding a ruler to the computer screen lol)
i was worried the drawer might look to wide but it looks ok in "3d"

CaptainSkully

Discussion Starter · #11 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

Thanks Ed. I've had Darrell's book for years (from the Gamble House gift shop), but had only leafed through it. It wasn't until I found TheWoodWhisperer's blog about taking Darrell's class that I decided to read it all the way through. It's very informative with great pics and a decent read.

jlsmith5963, I would love to be able to do this stuff in SketchUp, but it would take me as long to learn as building the table. I really need to sit down with the tutorials and dig into it soon. The import functions you're talking about sound cool too.

I don't know if I need to state it or reiterate it, but I'm not trying to "copy" Darrell's design. His plans are for a square-drawered night stand/end table, and Marc & Brad made arched drawer bottoms in class. Since I'm already making our night stands (see other blog), I needed to apply the Greene & Greene details to another project. The way our living room is now, we need a sofa table (longer and shallower). If we ever rearrange/move, it can be a foyer table under a mirror. I thought this would be a good excuse (read rationalization) to dig into the G&G details.

With that being said, I'll bet there's a way in SketchUp to "copy" Marc's table and stretch it into a sofa table. I just thought of that. Sigh…

Mike, please post a pic or link. I'd love to see it. As I've said before, I'm envious of everyone else's ability with SketchUp. As a relatively bright person, it's frustrating that this tool has eluded me.

One more thing I forgot to mention in the original post. I'm going to try hard to fit a tsuba into the design somewhere. Since the aprons will be pretty crowded, I might have to do an inlay on the top somehow.

This is not exactly what I had in mind, but close. It was ironically found on Darrell's website. I wish tsubas were covered in Darrell's and Robert Lang's books. It looks like I'll have to draw that up in AutoCAD too.

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jlsmith5963

· #12 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

It's inconceivable to me that someone with AutoCAD skills can't master Sketchup. Once you familiarize yourself with the basics of Sketchup your biggest problem will be that your AutoCAD keyboard shortcut habits won't work in Sketchup. Seriously, adding Sketchup skills will be one of the most productive things you can do as a woodworker who already has AutoCAD skills. I say this as someone who uses multiple CAD programs and has used AutoCAD since it was first introduced back in the early 80's.

MikeGager

· #13 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

well i have no idea how to post pictures on this forum lol. i dont have a photobucket or whatever website. anybody have any ideas?

Beginningwoodworker

· #14 · Sep 4, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Virtual Design

I've spent a couple of hours in AutoCAD trying to find the right proportions (using the Golden Mean religously), and here's what I've come up with:

It's 36" wide and 30" tall. Please let me know what you think. This project is too important to leave it up to me…

looks good!

CaptainSkully

Discussion Starter · #15 · Sep 7, 2009

Wood Selection

Being as it's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm out of QSWO, and my lumber yard isn't open until Tuesday, I turned from my other projects and worked with what I had, a butt-load of mahogany. My buddy was over talking boat stuff, so I asked him to give me a hand with the behemoth boards. We laid out both 3/4" x 18" x 10' boards on the sawhorses and looked at the magnificent, flowing grain patterns. We picked out the nicest 4' section and he helped me rough cut it out for the sofa table top.

Now, I at least have two manageable sections from either side on that one board, as the top was out of the middle of the board. It hurt to do this from an economic standpoint, but the value of the finished table improves immensely with proper grain selection.

This is the first time I've ever worked with mahogany, much less really dry, old growth Honduran mahogany. I'm going to relish every step. My buddy asked what it will look like finished, so I rubbed some water on the corner and he was blown away.

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kcrandy

· #16 · Sep 7, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Wood Selection

Being as it's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm out of QSWO, and my lumber yard isn't open until Tuesday, I turned from my other projects and worked with what I had, a butt-load of mahogany. My buddy was over talking boat stuff, so I asked him to give me a hand with the behemoth boards. We laid out both 3/4" x 18" x 10' boards on the sawhorses and looked at the magnificent, flowing grain patterns. We picked out the nicest 4' section and he helped me rough cut it out for the sofa table top.

Now, I at least have two manageable sections from either side on that one board, as the top was out of the middle of the board. It hurt to do this from an economic standpoint, but the value of the finished table improves immensely with proper grain selection.

This is the first time I've ever worked with mahogany, much less really dry, old growth Honduran mahogany. I'm going to relish every step. My buddy asked what it will look like finished, so I rubbed some water on the corner and he was blown away.

I'll be very interested in this project. I have a beautiful slab of solid walnut that I finished some time ago for the top, but I've been stumped on the legs. I work at an art museum which has some beautiful ancient Chinese furniture and there is a table in the collection in which the slab of wood just sits on an open box like structure. I want to study those joints if I get a chance. I'll try to get pictures and post and also of the walnut slab I have ready to use. Do keep me updated.

gizmodyne

· #17 · Sep 7, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Wood Selection

Being as it's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm out of QSWO, and my lumber yard isn't open until Tuesday, I turned from my other projects and worked with what I had, a butt-load of mahogany. My buddy was over talking boat stuff, so I asked him to give me a hand with the behemoth boards. We laid out both 3/4" x 18" x 10' boards on the sawhorses and looked at the magnificent, flowing grain patterns. We picked out the nicest 4' section and he helped me rough cut it out for the sofa table top.

Now, I at least have two manageable sections from either side on that one board, as the top was out of the middle of the board. It hurt to do this from an economic standpoint, but the value of the finished table improves immensely with proper grain selection.

This is the first time I've ever worked with mahogany, much less really dry, old growth Honduran mahogany. I'm going to relish every step. My buddy asked what it will look like finished, so I rubbed some water on the corner and he was blown away.

Impressive piece of wood. Cool project.

By the way…..What happened to the night stands?

CaptainSkully

Discussion Starter · #18 · Sep 7, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Wood Selection

Being as it's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm out of QSWO, and my lumber yard isn't open until Tuesday, I turned from my other projects and worked with what I had, a butt-load of mahogany. My buddy was over talking boat stuff, so I asked him to give me a hand with the behemoth boards. We laid out both 3/4" x 18" x 10' boards on the sawhorses and looked at the magnificent, flowing grain patterns. We picked out the nicest 4' section and he helped me rough cut it out for the sofa table top.

Now, I at least have two manageable sections from either side on that one board, as the top was out of the middle of the board. It hurt to do this from an economic standpoint, but the value of the finished table improves immensely with proper grain selection.

This is the first time I've ever worked with mahogany, much less really dry, old growth Honduran mahogany. I'm going to relish every step. My buddy asked what it will look like finished, so I rubbed some water on the corner and he was blown away.

Randy, that sounds like a magnificent piece of wood. I really appreciate Oriental design & joinery, so please do post anything you can find.

Giz, thanks. I ran out of quartersawn white oak, so the night stands are waiting patiently for the lumber yard to open on Tuesday morning. I ran over there Friday without making the proper pick list, so I left instead of wasting time, or worse, money. I'm also trying to stitch these blogs together, depending on the process. For example, if I have to wait overnight for a glueup on one project/blog to cook, then I'll work on another and post accordingly. Optimizing shop time is important because it doesn't help pay the rent.

kcrandy

· #19 · Sep 7, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Wood Selection

Being as it's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm out of QSWO, and my lumber yard isn't open until Tuesday, I turned from my other projects and worked with what I had, a butt-load of mahogany. My buddy was over talking boat stuff, so I asked him to give me a hand with the behemoth boards. We laid out both 3/4" x 18" x 10' boards on the sawhorses and looked at the magnificent, flowing grain patterns. We picked out the nicest 4' section and he helped me rough cut it out for the sofa table top.

Now, I at least have two manageable sections from either side on that one board, as the top was out of the middle of the board. It hurt to do this from an economic standpoint, but the value of the finished table improves immensely with proper grain selection.

This is the first time I've ever worked with mahogany, much less really dry, old growth Honduran mahogany. I'm going to relish every step. My buddy asked what it will look like finished, so I rubbed some water on the corner and he was blown away.

I just realized I didn't see your first to posts on this project. The sofa table I have in mind is quite different. The slab of single-piece walnut I have ready to go is two inches thick and 9.5 inches wide and 54 inches long. It will run behind my sofa, with no drawer.

matt1970

· #20 · Sep 7, 2009

CaptainSkully said:
Wood Selection

Being as it's Labor Day Weekend, and I'm out of QSWO, and my lumber yard isn't open until Tuesday, I turned from my other projects and worked with what I had, a butt-load of mahogany. My buddy was over talking boat stuff, so I asked him to give me a hand with the behemoth boards. We laid out both 3/4" x 18" x 10' boards on the sawhorses and looked at the magnificent, flowing grain patterns. We picked out the nicest 4' section and he helped me rough cut it out for the sofa table top.

Now, I at least have two manageable sections from either side on that one board, as the top was out of the middle of the board. It hurt to do this from an economic standpoint, but the value of the finished table improves immensely with proper grain selection.

This is the first time I've ever worked with mahogany, much less really dry, old growth Honduran mahogany. I'm going to relish every step. My buddy asked what it will look like finished, so I rubbed some water on the corner and he was blown away.

wow…that wood is beautiful…

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