A good dowel plate is, in my opinion, an essential tool. But you never know what’s going to happen when you hit things with a hammer, so I always make a few extra. I needed only two 2-in.-long pegs I could have easily gotten those from one of my approximately 5-in.-long blanks.
hole, which basically created an octagon as it peeled off the square edges. My first pass through the plate in this case was in the 3/8-in. The first pass peels off the corners to make an octagon. (As fun as it is to bash sticks through the dowel-plate holes, I shoot for efficient use of time.) Then I point the end of each before moving on to the dowel plate. I try to split the pieces small enough so that they fit into the hole no more than two or three sizes larger than what will be my finished peg size. That’s exactly what you want, because the straighter the grain, the stronger the peg (also known as a trenail or trunnel). You can see in the picture above that I started the split with the hacking knife in the center of the stock, but at the bottom, the split ran off to the left, following the grain. I first split a piece off the 3/4-in.-wide piece, then split that piece in two. It’s best to split the pieces off if possible, because wood will break along the grain lines, thereby ensuring you have a straight piece with no runout. In my case, that was a 3/4-in.-thick piece from the table aprons. Look through your offcuts and grab the straightest-grained stuff you can find. (Yes, the top helps, too, but it’s attached with wiggle room for expansion and contraction.) So I used a belt (tenons) and suspenders (pegs) for the joint at either end to make sure the thing would outlast Olivia.īut you can’t just walk into the home center and buy straight-grained walnut dowels with no runout that perfectly match the walnut for the rest of the table (if you can, I wish I lived near your home center), so I always find it best to make my own peg stock. Therefore, the piece that primarily serves to keep the table together and square across the front is the narrow rail that runs underneath the drawer. The key thing to notice about the table is that there is no rail above the drawer the underside of the top acts as its kicker. (I guess in the end mine looks more modern than Shaker…or like a well-fed Shaker.) This cherry side table was in the basement dining room of the Centre Family Dwelling at Pleasant Hill in 2007.
My inspiration was a side table from Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, in central Kentucky, as shown by Kerry Pierce in Pleasant Hill Shaker Furniture (2007, Popular Woodworking Books) – but with chonky legs (for my pile driver of a cat) and a slight underbevel on the tabletop. I also needed a drawer in which to store my glasses at night, because someone thinks they’re a toy. Plus, I wanted a table a little taller than typical: window height so Olivia can comfortably lounge while watching the squirrels while I’m away at the shop (my bed is pretty tall, so it works out on both counts). Because she lands like a two-ton hippopotamus, she needed something sturdy my wobbly old antique bedside table didn’t suffice. So a few months ago, I made my cat, Olivia, a table out of some nice walnut. Once in a while, I like to build something other than tool chests.