DIY Coffee Table

As my first DIY project I wanted to make something unique and challenging  also wanted to make it to be in a dismantle form  in other words "Knock Down Furniture "so it  can be taken apart when shifting to new house.  As a beginner I wanted a to use plywood as it is easy to work with and economic So started searching for the teak finish plywood in Bangalore and when I found it was too expensive I even looked for finger joint rubberwoood board all was too expensive so in the end had to settle for commercial plywood and laminate.  The point was it would have been much easier to use a teak finish ply or rubberwood as no lamination would have been required, none the less will use it for my other projects.

So after searching for many days on net I finalized this design as it can be made completely from plywood and can be taken apart easily.
I brought 12mm ply modified the design so that all the pieces can be carved from one Ply.

Table requires 4 small and 4 big pieces. So used Circular Saw to cut the pieces.

Design cut by JigSaw

Switched to Jigsaw to cut design in the pieces. after cutting the pieces it was time to cut the slots in the pieces so they can lock in without any nails or screws. As you can see from the images did a big blunder and later realized the mistake all the slots had to be in same side. So had to fix it again.

This is how the structure looked upon putting all the pieces together. Some of the pieces were not fitting properly so i had to give it a finish by filing it.

1 mm laminate was used and Fevicol SR998 as adhesive though I would suggest using Fevicol SH as it is safe to use.
Trimming the laminate in this design was a challenge due to the curves, So went to SJP Road and bought a Trim Router it really helped in trimming . The only side effect of using router is noise and lot of dust at one point my landlord came up to enquirer what was going on.
By the way, all the required equipment and Instruments starting from small screws to Circular saw can be easily purchased from SJP Road .
While pasting the Laminates it will be better it you can clamp it as the laminates some times tend to come off from the edges which i faced.
For the Top I brought 12mm Glass with beveled edges and round corners.
Finishing of the edges was the most crucial part had to paint the edges I could not find proper edge banding. So first applied primer to edges then applied wall putty again a layer of primer and then brown paint , had to do a lot of cleaning so that the paint do not spread to the laminate.
As my first major project it was a good learning experience.  Had bought tons of tools in the process of making coffee table will do a separate post on the tools later.

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About apoorv chaudhary