VE75 table for the Mess

Being in the army has helped me to start Reclaimed by Jonny. I have made a few things for military friends now. They are great people to work for. My most popular piece to date has been the one I am writing about now. A VE table for the Warrant Officers' and Sergeants' Mess. Someone in the Mess found a Union Flag table and asked if i could make something similar. It was made from pallets and was painted in the colours of the Union Flag. I of course said I could do it and proceeded to think of how I could improve it.

For anyone starting out in this type of thing, Google is a massively useful tool. It is the first place that I used to go to for ideas and designs. On this one though I came up with the idea all by myself. I was going to burn the Union Flag colours in using 3 shades of burn. With a fear of potential confusion, I wasn't going to burn red, white and blue. I was going to burn dark, not so dark and really not very dark at all.

Now, I have made a few coffee tables

this stage so I had the basic base plan and knew that I was going to be using thehairpinlegco.co.uk (not yet sponsored) legs for the table as I have done in all my previous tables. The biggest challenge was going to be cutting the angles in and making sure that the different elements of the flag were sized in comparrison to each other correctly. Theres nothing worse than seeing a Union Flag flying upside down and I wouldn't hear the end of it if I got it wrong. So I decided to draw it out on the base first.

I started with the cross of St George as it is the easiest to do, 2 butt joints. It's the other countries that were going to be causing the issues. I am still pretty new to this as well so my tool kit is still in its infancy and I didn't have all the tools that would of made it easier so I bastardised as well as I could. I got the angles cut pretty well and got it all put together dry. Now came the planing. This was the worst job of all because I don't have a thicknesser and I don't think any of the timber I used was the same thickness. This took a long time!!! I now had to figure out how to burn the 3 shades of burnt into the wood. I am the type to just dive straight in so true to form I did just that. No practice. It turned out to be a pretty straight forward thing to do, the hardest bit was making sure I kept all the pieces in order.

It's burnt and it's level. All was well so I glued the hell out of it all, struggled massively to get it all screwed in from the back, wrapped it in cling film, flipped it over and put everything heavy I had in the garden on it and left it over night. I woke up ready to unwrap it and expected turn it back over to see pieces out of place, how wrong I was, perfection

I couldn't sand it now as that would of got rid of the burn, however some pieces needed it so I got my kitchen blow torch out to touch it up after sanding and all was well. An edging was put on, 3 coats of varnish, a Reclaimed by Jonny brand and table legs to finish. It looked great and I was very pleased with the outcome.

It was an honour to commission this piece for the Mess and I am very thankful that the Battalion are willing to support my 'hobbie'.

Thank you to the Poachers WOSM.