A wedding gift for friends who live (tragically) far away, this table was designed to be fully dis-assemblable for efficient transport across state lines.
The thick ash table top pops apart into 5 discrete boards, each mortised with a tapered slot to snug along a sliding dovetail in the base frame. Once the leg & rail assemblies are pinned to the top, battening the boards together, an oversized “log” stretcher spans across the two leg frames to complete the piece.
The active experiment was to see if employing a substantial thickness in the table top boards themselves would be enough structure to keep the table rigid and sturdy once assembled, despite nothing being glued together. The sliding dovetail “battens” at the top of the legs would allow for the natural movement of the larger table top boards as they migrated to the much (much) drier climate of the Rocky Mountains, while still holding everything in place.
In the end, I underestimated just how much the wood would continue to shrink as it acclimated to its new home, far away from the water-rich deciduous forests of the Hudson Valley…without the sliding dovetail being a snug fit underneath the table top boards, the whole piece becomes a bit rickety. But, a couple of extra screws and some cheeky hardware later, I’m hopeful the table will still be able to serve its purpose, and for a while yet.
softpaths.blog 
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