Shaker Style End Tables

Here's a little bonus for those of you who actually read the blog, and don't just watch the videos.  If you want to see more of these, you might want to subscribe to Creative Minority's Facebook page, so you won't miss them. 

Several years ago I lost my cabinet shop in Oregon and had to fly down to Los Angeles to get a job in commercial construction (long story, but it worked out OK).  I realized that I wasn't doing much woodworking, so I developed this design and made several of them to keep in practice.  The design is based on hazy memories of a table I had seen Norm Abram make a few years previously on the New Yankee Workshop.  The beautiful thing about this design (as adapted by me) is that you can easily make it with nothing but hand tools and a router with a few common bits.  I know, because that's all I had at the time.  I still have two of these in my living room, and I always get positive comments whenever we have a dinner party.  If you are just making the jump from rough job site carpentry to building real furniture, this is an excellent project to start with.

The Basic Design

Obligatory Dovetail Shot

Another nice thing is that, by tweaking the overall width, you can make tables of several different sizes with the same plan.

A Smaller Version Made With The Same Plans

I won't give step-by-step instructions right now.  For one thing, I plan to do a Handyman Kevin episode about these tables in the future.  However, these shop drawings should be plenty accurate enough for you to build your own.  If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments.

For .pdf files, suitable for hi-res printing, click here.

Or, if you use AutoCad, the original .dwg file is here. 

Otherwise, here are some pictures of the plans: