Douglass Fir and Birch Plywood Trimmed with Douglass Fir

My buddy Scott has helped me with nearly every project that I have undertaken.  Rarely do we do any projects for him.  I was bored, he needed a table to hold a 20 Gallon aquarium, and I had some birch and Douglas fir that I was interested to see how would work together with a neutral stain.

This was a pretty simple project with fairly decent results for the few hours invested. I wanted to do something borrowing some styling from the Mission genre and allowing the contrast of the white birch and the reddish-orange Douglass to stand on its own. The project started with four straight legs cut from some rough 4×4 posts.

Remaining fir scraps were used to edge the 3/4 birch plywood used for the top surface and lower shelf.  The 3″ fir skirts were attached to the top with pocket screws and wood glue and provided the structure to mount the four legs which were glued and drawn to the adjacent skirts with corner braces.

A smaller shelf was added 1/3 of the way from the floor to the top. It was notched to fit the table legs and pocket screwed to the legs. The assembled unit was thoroughly sanded with medium to fine sandpaper and sanding blocks followed by a thinned coat of Ipswich Pine stain and a few coats of furniture wax applied with 00000 steel wool.  The finish was smooth but matte with a nice luster that allow the color of the wood to show.

Douglass Fir and Birch Plywood Trimmed with Douglass Fir