#HTE

Geeking Out Over Daniel Moyer’s “Workshop Tables”

As a teen I waited tables, and free “server’s meals” were provided after each shift. These were dowdy, uninspiring dishes the cooks whipped up using whatever hadn’t sold the previous day, and we ate them in the back, unseen by customers. Similarly, inside a furniture making shop you’ll see plenty of tables that the clients will never see: The shop furniture that the builders use to create their pieces on. These are often created from leftover plywood and cut-offs, held together with butt joints and screws, sturdy but ugly, pure form-follows-function.

Often—but not always. I have been going through furniture designer Daniel Moyer’s self-created Workshop Tables on which he prosecutes his craft, and I can’t take my eyes off them. They are fun to look at, utilitarian but playful, mostly made of humble, mismatched woods yet still beautiful, containing a contradictory blend of joinery both refined and raw. And part of the fun is trying to figure out why Moyer built various features into them.

Let’s’ start with this one:

The base is primarily constructed of S/P/F (Spruce/Pine/Fir) two-by lumber with exposed knots on the show faces; it’s not meant to go in a museum. He’s made an X-stretcher on the bottom, and notice how the casters he had on hand were too large to mate with the stretcher, so he created bolting plates out of pine 1x6 cut-offs and sandwiched it, leaving the bolts exposed. I don’t know why but I love this.

Then look above the bolting plate: He’s placed “feet” on the bottom of the posts. This adds nothing to the function, but is one of Moyer’s signature details, and I’m digging that he couldn’t help himself and had to add them.

Moving upwards we see two stretchers—or are they braces—joined to the posts with oblique half-lap joinery. Are the angles more effective at preventing racking, or did Moyer just feel they’d be more fun to do? Whatever the case, they add visual interest.

Here’s the part that’s got me stumped. We see a floating apron supporting the tabletop—whose grid suggests it’s a downdraft table used for sanding?—attached to the base by cross-lap joints. Why floating, and why joined in this manner? If I had to guess, perhaps the top is meant to be easily interchangeable and just pops off?

Check out this next one, which appears to be a rolling clamp rack:

Again, this alluring mix of elegant and ad-hoc joinery. First off notice the mismatched casters: The ones on the right are swiveling and locking casters, and he was able to rotate the mounting flange to fit the ends of the X-stretcher. But the casters on the left are non-swiveling fixed casters, so in order to get the flanges aligned on the axis of travel, he’s had to glue extension blocks onto the stretcher and bolt through those.

The gusset securing the center of the X-stretcher has mismatched bolts holding it together. Again, I don’t know why but I find this charming.

Notice that the legs have a taper at the very bottom. Another of Moyer’s signature details. Also note that this angle is echoed up top, a nice touch.

That angle is mirrored in the center cutouts. What’s that cutout for? On the far side I imagine it’s to provide more room to withdraw the clamps hanging on that side, but cannot figure out what the cutout’s function is on the near side. Perhaps this was part of a prototype for something else?

Oh, and I almost forgot the lower stretchers: Joined to the legs with a wedged through-tenon.

Up top, that floating table again, here with an extra center support. And that same grid, though this table is presumably not for sanding on; I couldn’t find a top view, but perhaps the squares are big enough to work the clamp through?

His sawbench is nice-looking too:

I can’t figure out how he uses it, though; there are no vises or stops, so I can’t see how he braces the work. In any case you’ll notice the same oblique half-lapped stretcher/braces as in the table above, and the same floating top, but this piece also has drawers.

Note that while most of the table, including the substantial top, is made of S/P/F, the drawer faces (and the X-stretcher) appear to be walnut. Also note that the drawer faces—and backs—are either cut from a single board or have been bookmatched.

And check out how he’s dado'ed some drawer slides into the legs; the sides of the drawers are presumably grooved correspondingly.

Moyer has poured a lot of effort into this seemingly simple piece. You’ll note that the pine boards making up the lower shelf have been notched at the corners, and the benchtop has been capped on either end, I guess to conceal the endgrain?

Anyways there’s a telltale sliver of light here that indicates he’s chamfered the vertical corners.

This non-rolling table appears to be where Moyer takes his tea and go over drawings.

Again we see wedged through-tenons for the stretchers, and at least one of the legs appears to have been laminated up from multiple pieces. The legs have “feet.”

We see that same trapezoidal cutout in the upper stretcher (secondary apron?) that we saw in one of the tables above; is it a clearance space for legs, is the table meant to be sat at? You can see a little sliver of light that indicates the cutout is also present in the upper stretcher on the far side of the table.

There are also notches at the exposed ends of the upper stretcher. An aesthetic detail, or were they meant to fit into some type of haunched joint?

I do wonder if the pieces with the trapezoidal cutouts are remnants from prototypes of Moyer’s other furniture pieces. Or just an aesthetic detail.

In any case, these are just the tables Moyer uses to build on; his actual product is pretty killer too. I’ll have to save those for another entry.

http://www.core77.com/posts/59444/Geeking-Out-Over-Daniel-Moyers-Workshop-Tables