A Hall Table

I'm struggling with curves. These curves haunt my early morning hours, elusive, beautiful. And these aren't curves of the feminine kind (well, usually not)... No, these are curves in wood, like the ones in the Japanese azumaya that I was planning to build.

Long, graceful curves along the wood grain. Easier said than done--these are very, very difficult cuts.

The beauty of a curve comes from its simple and perfect grace, something that diminishes with each slight imperfection, even those not apparent to the eye. Our brains are hard-wired to appreciate the perfection of nature expressed in geometry and symmetry. If the cuts aren't perfect, I will look out and hate them every day.

It turns out that the design shown above is an Americanized version of a pagoda roof--an authentic roof of this type should achieve its curve without having to actually cut curves into the rafters. So now I searching for a new, authentic plan (I'm not giving up).

In the meantime I'm exploring some curves in the hall table I'm building for Cheryl. I also found a way to cut some nice tapers into the legs. Even these small curves are tormenting me. I've just finished gluing the legs and aprons.

This will be a really delicate hall table just by the entry to the kitchen.

At some point time in the near future, the dogs will run into the table at full speed and turn it into splinters.