Today was the last day of the final workshop being offered by one of Cincinnati’s finest model furniture makers, Randy Himes. He was cleaning up and getting rid of his leftover kits. These kits had been kicking around since he retired from models over 10 years ago. I was lucky enough to have joined my NAME chapter just in time to learn from one of our Greats. The piece I chose to do was the Pembroke Table. I kit-bashed it as best I could so it would fit more with my contemporary pieces. I still followed the main instructions during the workshop so I could learn the techniques such as inlaying.
The kit I chose to do was his Pembroke Table. This is his example. I’m going to try to tweak the kit a bit so it’s a tad less ornate and might stand a chance at fitting into my more contemporary dollhouses.
Onto the Kit!
First of all, open up the kit; this simple little table has a ton of pieces!
Apparently, to inlay, it really is just cutting apart tiny pieces and gluing them down, bit by bit.
Squaring up the legs…
Adding them to the drawer top…
Making the drawer…
Gluing together the drawer box…
Creating the tiny hinges for the leaf supports…
Finishing:
Applying Deft satin laquer…
Another coat was added to the drawer…
We used a nail and sniped it short to use a drawer pull. I didn’t want to use the fancy bass handle.
You’ll notice in addition to swapping out the hardware, I also didn’t do inlay on the front legs, and made my drawer face square. I think these three changes help modernize the piece a bit.
Super cute! Tiny working drawers! I’m thinking I’ll probably hit the nail head with a dot of nail polish to make it look a little less galvanized and more like regular furniture hardware later on. The workshop at their house lasted for over 9 hours! (We had lunch and were working at a relaxed pace, but still!)
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Very nice table, keep up the good work and hold on to your dreams, someday they might come through ☺