The Side Table

While waiting for the fabric for the green chair to arrive, I got started on the side table next to the leather chair.

This is the original:

My pattern included strip wood and carved toothpicks, as well as floral wire and seed beads.

The most important part of the table, to me, was its barley twist legs (also known as rope twist).  I previewed my first effort at those in my last post.  Here it is again.

Yes, I’m aware the twist is going the opposite direction.  As it turns out, it was much easier for me to twist it this direction, since I’m right handed. 

I found two tutorials online:  https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/make-carved-miniature-rope-mouldings-2366807 and https://petitpunt.blogspot.com/2009/08/making-rope-twisted-legs.html.  The second one was enormously helpful, even though the author was clearly working with a larger scale.  (If I had made my initial cuts 2 mm deep, I would have cut right through the toothpick!)  I particularly liked the jig for holding the wood while cutting.  To make my own, I just glued two cut-off bamboo skewers side by side on a piece of scrap wood.  It worked perfectly! The tools I ended up using were the jig, my utility knife, a triangular file and a round file from my set of mini files, a fine grit sanding twig, and, of course, a ruler and pencil.

I cut off the ends of my fancy toothpicks, because they were a bit longer and a bit more consistent than my regular round toothpicks.  Round toothpicks often aren’t really round.  Even in the picture below, you can see that there is some flatness to parts of the sides.  I drew vertical lines 180 degrees apart down the sides, then marked horizontal lines all the way around the toothpick at 2 mm intervals.

I then drew my diagonal lines across each “box” formed by the two sets of lines.

I made my first set of cuts around the toothpick with my utility knife, following my diagonals down.  There are actually two sets of winding cuts—one starting in the top “box” of the left-hand side of the toothpick, one starting in the top “box” on the right-hand side.

I then widened the cuts with one edge of my triangular file.

I widened them further with my round file.

Finally, I softened the edges of my cuts with my sanding twig.

The whole process took about 45 minutes per toothpick.  The fussiest part was marking the lines.  After that, it was kind of fun.

Before assembling my table, I cut, stained, and varnished my legs, shelf and tabletop assembly.  The tabletop assembly was also glued before varnishing. The top of the table has been veneered with some of the maple I got from Carrie, as it takes the stain better than basswood and has a lovely smooth surface when varnished.

I then drilled tiny holes in the end of each piece of barley twist leg, as well as in the bottom four corners of the tabletop base and through the four corners of the shelf.  I glued small pieces of fine wire in the ends of each leg.  I used this wire to strengthen the connections between the component parts.  The bottoms of the legs are made with metal seed beads (in matte copper) and toothpick tips. The wire runs down through the shelf and the seed beads. The “wood” decoration is made from floral wire and more of the metal beads.  Of course, I was so intent on construction, I forgot to take pictures of the process, but here it is completed.

I’ve added some over-sized books and a lovely laser cut doily from Stewart Dollhouse Creations.

Is it just me, or does the base of the real-life lamp look exactly like it was made from a bead and a bead cap? 😃 This is where I intended to put the lamp whose shade I broke, but now I’m thinking I should just make my own.  Either way, I have to come up with some way of making a shade like that.  I wish they made ping pong balls that were half an inch in diameter.

The room box so far.  It’s slowly taking shape.