Hairpin Leg Table

The Design

Mom wanted a round top ~14″ in diameter which sat ~20-21″ off the floor. It’s always easy to build when you’re given direction on dimensions!

I took her to my local craft lumber store to get some ideas. After checking out some live edge slabs and disks we settled on 2 pieces of maple which would sandwich 1 piece of roasted maple, all 3/4″ thick.

We also saw some tables there on display with hairpin legs. She liked the modern mid-century look so we settled on a 3-leg approach.

The Build

Table Top

I started here by first gluing the 3 pieces together and clamping them for 24 hours. I used Gorilla Wood Glue at the time, but am preferring the Titebond products as of late.

I then took it to the bandsaw and cut a circle slightly larger than 14″. I sanded the edge smooth (and round!) and then chamfered the edges with a router. After sanding everything down to 220 it get set aside for the finishing touches.

Hairpin Legs

I had inherited a metal bender recently, but never hadn’t yet had a chance to use it. I couldn’t find the exact one, but it looked somewhat like this one. You can do some pretty cool stuff with simple round and flat bar bends.

I used a 3/4″ inner die and 1-3/4″ outter die to bend the legs ~19-1/2″ long. I finally welded these to a triangular piece of welded flat bar so that they could be mounted to the table top.

Coaster

I decided to use some of the cutoff maple from the circular top for the coasters. I used a hole saw to cut 1-1/2″ disks out of the scrap and sanded them smooth. Then I cut a ~3/8″ x 3/8″ groove out of them for the legs to sit in.

Finishing Touches

The maple was finished with my favourite Danish oil to make the natural wood grain pop. I don’t expect it to get heavy use, but if it does I will add a few coats of some water based polyurethane.

The legs were simply sprayed with Tremclad 2x flat black and then screwed into the table top with #8’s.