Pop's Table

Yet another mini-project that has surfaced from our shuffling stuff around in the house: Jane's grandfather's occasional table, which has been in our possession for God knows how many years. It has suffered a bit over time and had been relegated to a dank corner of the dining room as a place for the teapot and spare plates and sundry other items with no place else to go. A bit of a shame really, as it's a bit of genuine - if unspectacular - Art Deco era furniture, already getting on a bit itself when Pop died in 1981; so my guess is that it's knocking on a century old by now.

It's made of solid wood, rather than veneered, and although not of great quality in itself, the bent-wood frame [just visible in the picture] and the age and patina of the thing - let alone the connection with the old man, who served as a medic in Alexandria in the First World War, make it well worth salvaging; as is the long case clock case that will take its place in the dining room [no movement in it, but a thing of some beauty, and only thirty quid!]. I've had to splice in a very thin piece of wood - a bit of spare pitch pine [which in itself necessitated the renovation and sharpening of my rather sad and neglected block plane; a sort of mini-project within a mini-project, if you will] - between the top planks, as they'd separated by about 3-1/16's of an inch over the years due to shrinkage. You can just see the little skunk stripe in the photo. Once the glue's dried, all that remains is to sand and wax the thing. Keep you posted on progress...