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Make a Circular Table with Pine or Meranti Dowels

Furniture and accessories with curves bring a softness into any room and now you can make an inexpensive circular table with a few scraps of wood and some pine or meranti dowels.

19/06/2022

 

 

 

 

You always need a side table or two in your living room, family room, den, home bar, or even outdoors on the patio. These circular designs don't look like anything you can buy in the store, and they are super-easy to make with a few supplies you can purchase at any Builders store around the country. The materials to make one of these side tables are cheap, so you can afford to make a couple of matching side tables, casual dining table, tables for on the patio, or even bedside tables. Find instuctions from alceandlois.com here.

 

 

I like the idea of making an affordable side or coffee table, since you get to make it the exact size or shape that you need. Although this idea works better with circular or oval tables, with a bit of finagling it could also work for a square or rectangular table. Dowels come in all lengths so you can buy exactly what you need, but if you need to cut the dowels to a specific length you can use a mitre box and backsaw or a jigsaw, mitre saw, table saw or even a handsaw.

 

 

 

This fluted pedestal made using pine or meranti dowels would also look fantastic as a plant stand in the home.

 

 

 

 

The dowel side table shown above is by aliceandlois.com and is a simple project that you can make that gives you a side table or table that you can use for display or as a plant stand. All you need to make something similar is a solid cardboard tube or PVC pipe around which you can glue the dowels and then add a pine or hardwood top. I would recommend that you have something heavy in the tube or pipe to weigh the table down and keep it stable.

 

 

 

 

There are plenty of different variations of this dowel table design, all of which are easy to make. If you need a larger diameter table, make a basic frame using scrap timber to support the dowels and wrap this with thick card or cardboard so that you can stick the dowels onto this to create the circular or oval fluted shape. The table shown above and below is finished off with a solid wood top and base that can be made using pine or your choice of hardwood. Stain the table or leave as is and apply a matt, satin or gloss varnish or polyurethane to protect the finish.

 

 

 

 

TIP #1

Fill the cardboard tube or PVC pipe form with a wet mixture of cement and sand, set and cured to keep the table stable and steady.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is really nice about this design is that you can use it to make any size of table, large or small, for a side table, bistro table or casual dining table. The most important element is to make sure that the table base is heavy enough to support the weight of the top.

 

 

 

 

TIP #2

For the top, you have the option of a soft, medium, or hardwood, choose a sheet metal such as copper, aluminium, or stainless steel, or you can add a 10mm-thick glass top to finish off the table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This dowel design has become so popular that it has evolved into all different types of design, even going to far as to be used to design unusual ottomans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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