The two-drawer version of The Fitzgerald was a great opportunity for continuous grain. I generally don't leave the lumber yard until I've touched just about every piece of walnut. This was actually the second set of drawer fronts I made for this table. The first ones just didn't do it for me. They were fairly straight-grained, and gorgeous in their own right, but the second board I got worked out far better.

This back three-quarter view is my favorite angle of the coffee table. I have no idea why. I think you see a little bit of everything.

A series of dadoes and half laps make up the internal drawer structure. You can see a little dado here peaking out. I love this little detail. I wonder if my customer has ever noticed it, but at the end of the day it's about what we notice, anyway.

I've gotten a few messages from woodworkers on Instagram suggesting I try Blum under-mount hinges. I'd love to, but this is a shallow drawer as it is, and those slides need 1/2" of clearance on the bottom, which I'd have to sacrifice from the overall depth of the drawer. I think it's already between three and four inches, so 1/2" seems like a lot to me. I have a potential client asking for a 50" wide version of this, which lends itself to scaling up a bit. I may just have to give it a shot.

The grain on this leg blows my mind.

The one one the left is the two-drawer version for a customer on Etsy. The one on the right is the first one I made, which lives in my living room. It's two inches taller at 18" tall.

Epic face-off.

It all starts with MDF and some chalk. Chalk wipes off easily, as I have learned. This wasn't the part layout I ultimately went with.

I make sure to keep track of "show" faces. I didn't do that on my first one (which was for me) and the grain I loved is on the inside of the table!

I always try to find curly and chatoyant pieces for legs.

Fresh off of the bandsaw. When I trace the template, I use a standard sized sharpie, and try to basically cut that marker width in half on the bandsaw. That leaves me very little to do with the router. I use a Whiteside up-cut spiral flush trim bit for my template routing. It doesn't care about grain direction and I love it!

If you look closely, you can see the layout lines for the dominoes. I use 10mm x 50mm dominoes for 8/4 pieces like these.

The stretcher is also connected with dominoes. I have a simple jig that helps me mark layout lines off of which to register the domino.

It's crazy what a 1/4" round-over bit can do. These legs haven't gotten that yet, and I think they look super bulky at this point.

I make sure to cut the back stretcher, the back of the drawer housing, and the top front stretcher all at the same time so nothing gets wonky.

I always pre-finish the coffee table before the glue up. I use satin Arm-R-Seal. I can't imagine trying to finish this thing after the glue up! Even dried glue squeeze out practically falls right off of the pre-finished pieces.

I make little paper towel booties for my clamps so they don't scuff the finished surfaces.

This was a photo I sent to my client. He was stoked about the continuous grain! I was stoked to have a client that knew what continues grain meant!

Speaking of continuous grain, the walnut drawer bottoms are also continuous. Sure, they'll be covered in magazines, coasters, and remotes, but that's not the point.

It's nice to work on the drawer slides without the top on.

My favorite angle of the table. Oh man.

I put a subtle curve around the back of the table, which I didn't do on the first version that I made. I think it complements the curvature of the legs.

I finished everything inside my house since it was about 37 degrees out and the first coat of wipe-on Arm-R-Seal took over a day to dry. I can usually get two coats on in a single day during the summer!

Feathery.

You should have seen the other side!