Making a Side Table my Own Way - Part 4 - Compass Table

Since the set up for making something from scratch is so much work, from planing the wood to setting the mitre saw on an angle to setting the router for cutting a groove.. why not make more than one table?

Besides, I had the extra legs.

I decided to make a compass table top for my second round table:

My first round table had a clock face, you can see it here

There are so many bloggers with good ideas and I was inspired by Beth at the blog Make Me Pretty Again who made this great table:

Inspiration photo from Make Me Pretty Again

Here's another great table with a compass on top... I love the map drawer. It's from Nan at the blog sea rose cottage

I made my own circular top by gluing together pieces of scrap pine. If you make the edges nice and even, you can easily glue pieces side by side, there is no need for screws and ugly screw holes like you get with pocket screws. Using good quality clamps helps:

I really enjoy making circles with my router. You can really make any size and I explained how I did it in an earlier post when making my clock face here

The rest of the triangular table build was explained in Part 1 and Part 2 a few days ago.

For this table I painted the legs, base and top with Chalk Paint in the colour "Provence." I really wasn't sure if I could use basic acrylic craft paint over the chalk paint so I emailed Tricia, a blogger at The Purple Painted Lady who sells Annie Sloan chalk paint. I did not know Tricia, but sent her an email and asked her opinion and she was kind enough to quickly reply that it would be okay to paint over the chalk paint. She added to wax after adding the craft paint. It's so nice to have bloggers helping others like that, thanks Tricia!

I looked online to see how compasses were drawn and using my math skills and a protractor, came up with a design similar to Beths but different. I drew it on with pencil and then painted it by hand.