I went searching several places in Boulder for the wood that I was looking for to best match my design. Surprisingly I stopped by goodwill and was able to find a large oak tree cooking that would work great for the table top of the night stand, and 5 smaller cookies of wood that I thought might be useful to use even if it wasn’t for what I expected for this project.
After analyzing the material I had with the time to at I had left for the project, I decided to change up the design slightly, fully utilizing the material that I had at hand. On this sheet of paper you can sort of see my though process, but essentially I am using the small cookies to create a base/stem for the nightstand. You can visualize this is the drawing but to do this I am going to have to cut them and carefully create joints so that they form the stem correctly and are also rigid/structurally stable at the same time.
Here you can see the cuts and the design of the base/stem coming to life. The first image shows what the bottom and top of the stem will look like, these were made by essentially cutting the cookies in half and using a band saw to get the joints to go together such as on the left image. Then to connect the bottom/top to the other cookies I had to chisel corners onto the cuts done with the band saw so that it fits the X shape that was on the bottom/top. Connecting everything with a nice fit as well as wood glue to provide a bit more support I ended up with the last image which finalizes the stem for the nightstand.
Here is the final product!!!
I am happy with how it turned out, in my opinion this is a design that shows a Latin American Aesthetic having a strong relationship with nature and is also functional for what I wanted out of this project which was a more unique piece of furniture that represented a little bit of my culture. I didn’t have time to take pictures of it in any other setting that matched the aesthetic but I hope that from the process you can appreciate the way it turned out, even though I could have managed my time a bit better.
With more time I would’ve liked to engrave the national bird of Venezuela onto the top of the nightstand (where I am from) as well as finishing the smaller cookies with a bit of wood stain or something to make it look a bit more sleek. But none the less I am proud of how it turned out.
