Look underneath a table and see how its built.

Look behind a drawer; see if the drawer is finished. All my pieces are totally finished from top to bottom. We do not take shortcuts to make the piece cheaper.

When we are finishing our furniture we also seal the wood from underneath so the drawers, the backs of our cabinets, the under side of our tables are all sealed to prevent moisture from getting up into the wood.

Also our furniture is all made so that it can move during all sorts of weather conditions, because the wood moves, it expands and contracts so we are all about movement.

EDGE JOINTS

Bow Tie: A traditional fastener used for edge-to-edge joints in Japan is the butterfly key. It is often used in contemporary furniture as a decorative element, as well as a functional one. The key can be used to join boards without glue, especially where they might later need to be disassembled.

Pegged mortise-and-tenon

DOVETAIL JOINTS

The dovetail joint was developed before reliable glues and cheap fasteners were available. It has some major advantages. The dovetail allows expansion and contraction of the wood without losing any of its structural integrity.

WOOD MOVEMENT

In response to changes in the moisture content in the air, wood expands and contracts across the grain but minimally along the grain. So a tabletop, whether made of a single board or formed by gluing several edge-to- edge, will have a range of movement of as much as 3/g inch, depending upon the species of wood and the width of the tabletop.

Wood movement has both cosmetic and structural consequences. The cosmetic effect is that a tabletop, over the course of a year will change in size and sometimes in shape. In prolonged periods of low humidity, for example, a round tabletop will shrink across the grain and become elliptical. The change may go unnoticed in a large table, but in a small table it could be quite evident.

A large rectangular tabletop, especially one with a substantial overhang, may cup or bow slightly or get wavy along the end. The traditional preventive measure is the “breadboard end,” a strip joined across the end of the tabletop.

This does help to maintain flatness, but it has a cosmetic problem of its own: The joint between the edge of the breadboard end and the edge of the table will vary with wood movement. When humidity is highest, the tabletop will expand and extend beyond ends of the breadboard. When humidity is lowest, the tabletop will shrink and the ends of the breadboard will be proud.

The structural impact of a tabletop’s expansion and contraction is considerable, as shown in Wood Movement Cosmetics. If the tabletop is firmly fixed to the leg-and-apron assembly, several things can happen. The tabletop can buckle as it expands, or crack and split as it shrinks. It can also promote joint failure in the framework.

KEEPING THE TOP FLAT

The first order in making a tabletop, then, is to keep it flat in a way that doesn’t cause it to damage itself.

With trestle tables and tavern tables, the tabletop is often kept fiat by screwing a batten or cleat to the underside. The batten might even double as a connection between the tabletop and the trestle or leg structure. In any event, to allow the wood to expand and contract, the mounting screws must be run through slots in the cleat rather than through tight pilot holes.