Italian Empire Dining Table Project

We are still working on projects in these difficult times, but two things have changed. We are accepting more diverse types of jobs these days, like gilding, sharkskin/parchment, upholstery, etc. And we are not able to produce the continuous flow of work we had previously enjoyed for several decades.

In the past we normally had a minimum of 6 months backlog of good work sitting in the shop. At the same time we were putting jobs out the front door, new work was being bid and brought in the back. Therefore, we could work full time and never see the end of the work. The importance of this backlog of quality work, properly bid, meant that I could continue to bid new jobs at the best price.

It also meant that I could bundle projects with similar activities for each week to gain maximum efficiency. One week might be spent hand sanding all jobs that were at that stage. The next week the shop could be cleaned and all those projects would begin the finishing operation. After that, I could spend a week upholstering, since the shop was clean. In a small, two man shop with not a lot of space, this method of processing the work was very profitable.

These days we still have work, but the backlog is down to 6 weeks instead of 6 months. Also, we do not have the quantity of similar jobs, since we are accepting more diverse projects, and it is difficult to do the same activity for a full week. The result of this is that the shop needs to be reset more frequently during the week for each type of project. Much less efficient.

At the same time, a large project, which was not a problem in the past, can completely block the flow of work.

We are building a large Italian Empire Table and matching chairs for a client. It has taken us longer than we estimated, and the client has been patient. (Note the recent post: It Always Takes Longer...) Although it has been in pieces all over the shop for several months, we can easily visualize it in our minds. The client, however, can only look at the parts laying here and there and wonder if we know what we are doing.

Lately, the parts have been coming together. The bases are nearly assembled, the gold bronze mounts will be shipped from Paris next week, and the top is completed and sanded, ready for the polishing to begin.

The top has been on my workbench for the past month. You can imagine how that has interrupted my work space. It takes two men just to move it, so I cannot do it alone. It has been completely fabricated using only hand tools. All the joints were made with hand planes and the top and back of the top were surfaced using a sequence of hand planing and sanding methods.

The single mahogany board was cut into four pieces and the edge was cut in for the Greek key using a basic old fashioned router. Not the router you plug into the wall, but a chisel mounted vertically in a piece of wood, set to a 2mm depth. Using this tool around the top, I was able to remove all the wood evenly for the Greek key to fit flush with the solid top. Then I added a solid mahogany edge to protect the veneer from damage.

The reason I started this post talking about the flow of work is that I need to make several dovetailed drawers and I hope to have this Empire table off my workbench and on its own base soon. I miss my workbench; I haven's seen it for a month!