My wife and I have a cottage in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that is furnished with rustic log furniture made by a local craftsman, now long gone. She mentioned that it would be nice to have a few additional pieces added, so I volunteered to make them. The first thing I needed to do was make a shaving horse to hold the logs for debarking and for cutting the tenons. I did a bit of searching and came with a suitable design. Once the shaving bench was built, I decided to start with a simple end table to see how much trouble I had gotten myself into.
The original furniture was made of cedar, but I opted for pine since it is more plentiful in my area. All of the wood I used was cut from the forest surrounding the cottage. Once cut, the logs were debarked using a drawknife. Next, they we're cut to length and the tenons formed on the ends, again using my trusty drawknife. The mortises were cut with a brace and bit. The tops on this furniture was made of plywood and I was lucky enough to find a few pieces of vintage, plug free plywood in the attic of the garage. I used modern 3/4" for strength and screwed that to the legs, then screwed the vintage stuff to it from below. Edging was screwed to the top "sandwich" and the holes plugged with dowels to mimic the original style. When the wood was dry, I finished it in yellow shellac like the originals.
The first table turned out well and wasn't overly painful so I made a second one and a coffee table. I'm currently hard at work on a log bed that I'm trying to finish building by Thanksgiving, when we shut the place down for the winter. Then it will have time to dry so I can shellac it in the spring.
It's a huge change making this rustic furniture from the precision work I do with metal at home, but it is relaxing. We will probably move up here eventually but until then, the U.P. Is my woodworking retreat.
Tom
