5 Week Project | Nov - Dec 2025
Simple furniture is a basic furniture project used to teach students the basics of woodworking, joinery, and furniture-making. The project is very constricted to simple designs, putting the main focus on precision and details.
Research
These are created off IKEA designs I saw in the store. The purpose of this phase was to define simple furniture, look at examples of successful simplicity, and see basic joinery details in person. Most of these pictures used are from the IKEA website.
Initial Sketches
Refined Sketches
full scale orthographic
Created in Fusion 360 and Adobe Illustrator
Build Process
Step one was finding the wood. About 50 years ago, my great grandpa cut down a massive cypress tree in his front yard and had it milled. The wood sat in his barn until I found it. The wood was in lengths of up to 25 feet long and so it unfortunately had to be cut down into about 6 foot lengths to be transported to school.
Step two was preparing all of my pieces. With the wood having sat so long, I hit it all with a wire brush and air hose to clean it before sending it through the joiner and planer. After that, I used a router and chisel on my bench top to clean up the fallen out knot and make the leg slots. Next, I cut out my aprons and legs and hit all the hard edges with a router bit on the router table to avoid damage when being moved. Finally, I added domino joints and glue to secure all of the pieces together, screwed the top board on, and later finished it with a clear finish.
Final photos
