Jeffrey Burke suffers, like many of us, from a lack of confidence in his skills. Sure, he’s a professional woodworker , but when it comes to competition, all his skills feel inadequate (he says). Well, let me just speak directly to you Jeffrey, your skills are fine and you nailed it!
This is Burke’s entry into the Rockler Plywood challenge by the Modern Maker Podcast. Don’t be surprised if you see a few more entrants pop into the blog feed, there are some really cool projects coming out of this.
Jeffrey wanted to work with plywood using some of the techniques that he uses with more traditional wood. I think he did a fantastic job.
I decided to get 2 birds with 1 stone with this project. My submission is a Coffee Table for my mother for Mothers Day. I wanted to design a piece that seamlessly blended together the plywood with the reclaimed barn wood. The design is built with a 3/4″ sheet maple plywood with reclaimed pine for the edge banding and inlays. The drawers open to both the front and the back for easy access. The hues of the two materials compliment each other nicely.
From the time i started till the time i delivered it to my mother it took about 1 week of crafting to build this piece. I work primarily with reclaimed wood for my furniture pieces. A big difference with plywood that i noticed when building this piece was in the finishing booth. I had to put on about 3 more coats of polyurethane than expected because there is no room for errors and dust particles on the plywood. I can typically get away with a rough polyurethane finish on reclaimed, because the surface is rough and uneven to begin with.
The drawers that rest on bolts work well but i would change the design a bit to allow the bolts to be placed closer together to allow the drawers to slide out a little bit further in either direction.
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