Wooden Labyrinth Cutting Board / Side Table

Just the other day….

A couple of years ago, I had access to a complete wood shop for a couple of months - a couple of hours every other day = much too short, but great!

The supervisor told me that I could make whatever I want - if I pass the entry test and don’t cut my hands off during the walk around the premises. The entry test consisted of putting a little prefab sample project together. I chose a small lantern and improved its design so you aren‘t restricted to tea warmer candles and so it doesn‘t light on fire, when a regular candle burns down.

I like labyrinths and designed my own many years ago, when I looked a bit into how they work. It‘s based on the inverse of the fundamental unit of the most symmetrically designed Christian labyrinth in France: The Chartres Labyrinth. I added an additional couple of paths at the time to make it bigger (7-path) and more interesting and have used it many times….

Also, I always wanted to make a patterned cutting board, but always thought that it would be much too difficult with the limited tools I have available at home, even with the ‚normal‘ patterns - so let‘s go already!

So: „You did a decent job with the lantern. Have you decided what you want to do as a ‚real’ project?“

A couple of days before, I had taken a big sheet of paper and drawn up the labyrinth I wanted to make and calculated the rough amount of wood I would require. The supervisor, and his assistant, looked at the design for a long time, and shook their heads: „Can‘t be done. Especially with the quite limited time and the lack of know-how, it‘s impossible.“

I‘d had a couple of other ideas planned, but they were boring in comparison, so I told them that I‘d like to at least try anyway. I ended up doing the Nutshell-Epoxy Tea Candle Holder and the Couch Tablet Stand for my wife, and the simple Puzzle Ball, and the Jig for a Yoshimoto Star Cube, and a stand for my OneWheel anyway, while I was working on the labyrinth, and prepared a slice of a >100 year old hollow cherry tree to make a small side table top - but those would be different Instructables….

(It really was a bit of a stressful time - and yes, my own fault!)

„You could do the labyrinth as an inlay on a piece of plywood as base instead.“ We even looked at the different - admittedly beautiful - vernier sheets of wood that were available, but I wanted to try the real thing and vernier on a cutting board is like feeding fish to sea lions.

It was finally decided that I was allowed to try my best - and fail….

The cutting board part was a project that really caused a few sleepless nights and lots of stress in the face of certain failure. But it was also a lot of fun!

So if you ever get a chance to try something like this - do it - it‘s worth the effort!

The Board:

There were some light Ash planks available for the light sections, and for the dark paths of the labyrinth, we chose some old handrails from an old school that had been lying around in the depot for years - possibly Teak.

I thought that a decent cutting board should be maybe 3 cm thick and wanted to make the paths of the labyrinth about 1 cm wide, so they cut slats of roughly that thickness and height - enough with about 2 m each to spare. There wasn‘t enough hand rail left for more - so don‘t mess up and waste wood!

1. Wooden slats, 1 cm x 3 cm x 200-300 cm,
2. 555 cm light and
3. 652 cm dark

Since the dark wood was in quite limited supply, I had considered darkening half the light Ash to use instead of the (Teak) hand-rail.

To blacken (ebonizing) wood, you can use commercial dyes, or simply black tea to add tannins for the reaction with a pre-prepared Iron-Acetate solution, made from steel wool in vinegar - see my Instructable. If the wood is porous enough, the solutions will penetrate deeply enough, so that you can actually sand it down a bit. The probability of sanding down to the untreated wood is pretty high though.

I did some tests with small pieces of Ash, Teak and birch-ply, but wasn‘t really happy with the results. So I used the hand-rail instead - with lots of worries about not having enough material….

1. Steel wool
2. Vinegar and
3. Black tea in plastic bottles

To keep things together, simple wood glue was used and some clamps of various sizes, as well as a nylon ribbon for the completion of the octagon.

1. Wood glue (lots)
2. Different size clamps
3. Nylon ribbon

To cut all the little puzzle pieces, you need a saw that cuts consistently at the angles you want, and quickly, so a compound miter saw is a really useful appliance.

Assemblage of lots of sections of wood into a coherent whole involves a bit of sanding, so different grades of sandpaper are helpful, as well as an electric sander to save time.

As some parts, as well as the finished board are a bit larger than your average sheet of sandpaper, a large belt sander can save huge amounts of time. They had one with about 1 m usable sanding surface!

So, theoretically, I could have done the whole Labyrinth Board part of the project at home, but it would have taken an inordinately large amount of time and effort and would have made a big mess.

The Base:

The board was made about a year before the base, so I had to revert to a minimalized tool supply.

To make the base of a small table and its legs, I could have bought wood and other parts at the local store, but why not reclaim waste that you find on the sidewalk on your way home? I used slats from an older slatted bedframe as well as some glue, and bolts from an old IKEA Ivar shelf, as well as an unused piece of aluminum profile to put it together.

1. 4 bedframe slats a 2 m (736 cm)
2. Wood glue
3. 12 Stainless steel Ikea bolts
4. Sandpaper and electric sander
5. Japanese Kataba saw
6. Short section of aluminum profile, 1 mm x 10 x 10 mm, 20 cm

First of all: What is a labyrinth?

Well, it‘s simply a twisted up path, that is meant to confuse your eyes and maybe cause a headache, if you twist your mind around it.

In a labyrinth, you can get confused, but you will never get lost, because there is only one path, i.e. In = Out, not like in a maze, where there may be several paths to get you to where you may (or not) want to go.

The labyrinth is therefore both scary and comforting, and it is ideal for quiet meditation and loud children racing through.

Just like mazes, labyrinths come in all shapes and sizes. They date back at least around 5000 years and were done with different approaches during different times, by different peoples all over the world.

The Classical Greek labyrinths are the easiest to draw - I taught my kids when they were still in kindergarden. The Greeks started typically with a seed pattern - four dots as corners of a square and two lines forming a cross between them - and connecting the „dots“ to form the labyrinth. They also left us the ubiquitously used „Greek Key“, a simple meander pattern, that is also the solution to the classical labyrinth.

The Romans took the labyrinths, of course, because it is simply a cool thing and adapted it to their own philosophy. Here, the importance lies on the „walled city“ with a clear center. They also usually took a modified version of the meander pattern and simply repeated it around the center a few times to form the labyrinth.

The Christians, finally, took a slightly different approach to their labyrinths. Their „ideal“ focus was the cross, of course, and they decided to take the meander to a new level by extending one (complicated) meander across the whole labyrinth, instead of repeating a smaller pattern - monks had some time to work things out. The idea with the Christian Labyrinth is the focus on the totality of the underlying path, extending it to the final design by splitting it into four sections to form the cross and connecting the dots between them.

The most evolved of this type of labyrinths can be seen in the floor of the Cathedral of Chartes in France. It is quite large and can be walked from time to time. It is also round. In the Cathedral of Amiens, they took the same basic pattern and made it into an octagonal shape, which gives it a completely different feel. Some people prefer the round, organic, shapes, some prefer straight lines - it‘s up to you. If you get the chance to walk a large labyrinth in the dark, you‘ll notice that you can lose your orientation quite quickly in either.

Enough on theory….

Because I already had my pattern, I‘m not delving into the details of developing a new pattern from scratch - that would make a new Instructable - but focus on designing the board with the pattern I have.

Since I had decided to make another labyrinth, and in wood this time, the question remained: How?

So let‘s get started:

A typical Christian pattern is round. But, bending wood, though possible, is tedious and takes some time and you need lots of sections with different radii - simply not practical, i.e. impossible.

Doing the Amiens type labyrinth with 1 cm wide paths would result in a total size of at least about 50 cm diameter, which is a bit large and unwieldy for a kitchen top.

Thus, I quickly ended up using my old pattern and adapting it to an octagonal shape. Why not a square? Because I had drawn the pattern first (years ago) as a square, and an octagon is much cooler - though more difficult….

Preserving the Chartres proportions, I would end up with a roughly 40 cm diameter pattern - perfect!

Year ago, I had the chance to do a bit of stained glass work. At the time, I found it best to draw a full-size pattern, cut the glass and use the drawing as the template. This way you always see where pieces are missing and can judge quite well how well things will fit.

So I decided to do the same with the labyrinth. Also, it made it much easier to calculate the required lengths of wood needed for the project.

As mentioned above, if you want to draw a Christian labyrinth, it is best to draw your basic pattern first - like the Greek Key (meander), but larger and more complex. You can see my pattern on one of the pictures.

If you want to stick to the basic cross, your pattern needs to be splittable into 5 sections and you want all the switchbacks butting against these cuts. If you want to do a pentagram, you need a pattern with six sections, and so on…. That is, because the first and last half-section will end up back to back, making up one complete section.

The center in a Chartres labyrinth is about ¼ of the total diameter, so I planned to do the same. From there it is a simple calculation and you just need to draw an octagon of the matching proportions on your paper. I decided to have the wall separating entrance path and path to the center as the dividing line of the labyrinth, i.e. center of the cross.

Once you have the octagon with all the paths, you can easily transfer the five sections of your design to the four sections around the octagon and connect the lines.

But, for me, this actually showed that the center needed to be enlarged, because the switch-backs would not fit on the straight sections available for the entrance to the center - more erasing and drawing. This shows again, that it does make sense to draw a full, maybe even life-size, model to see if things will actually work out.

With the drawing complete, you can also decide how you want to orient the grain in the turns of the path - should they orient perpendicular to the normal, or parallel, should the ends be cut at 45 deg angles….? The same with the triangular corners that you will need to square the octagon.

When you have everything perfectly figured out, it makes sense to make a rough list of steps on how to proceed, lest you forget to do something in the right order and maybe run out of wood….

And having a list of steps always makes it easier to adapt when something comes up and throws everything up in the air, because it always does and then you know what to keep in mind when you reorganize things.

The most important thing:

Concentrate and take your time! Plan five steps ahead. If others interrupt and need help - help them! Then go back to your own work, think it through and start….

If you rush, you probably will break something, or hurt yourself - especially when using power tools!!!

The most tedious sections of a labyrinth are the ones with turns, as well the entrance and exit.

So, I find it best to start with the most difficult parts and see if you fail with them and maybe start with a better suited project, quickly.

Therefore, I decided to start with the section with the entrance to the labyrinth and the exit towards the center. At that time, I had no idea how the center would actually end up looking like, so the section stops where the path to the center ends - you can always add wood sections later on.

To conserve the precious dark wood I decided to cut all pieces so that they would Tend to form a rough shortened triangle (=parallelogram) when glued together, so that only a relatively small amount would need to be cut off later on. It turned out that they became more rectangular, but that I should have been a bit more generous nonetheless, but I made it fit in the end.

It‘s good to measure and draw/mark each piece and then measure and check again before cutting, because you can never lengthen by cutting.

I decided to stick with 90 deg angles for the path cuts and cut all pieces on the miter saw.

Always make sure that the saw is aligned perfectly!

If your cuts aren’t perpendicular to the horizontal, i.e. the blade perfectly vertical, or not perpendicular to the length when set at 90 deg, the pieces will show gaps when glued. It actually took quite some time to correctly align the saw before starting my cuts, because the previous user didn‘t care much and mistreated the saw - again and again.

I also found it quite useful to cut and fit most pieces separately and assemble them on the drawing before cutting the next. It takes a bit longer when you do it this way, but you tend to make less mistakes - and save the precious wood.

With pieces of the first section cut and assembled, I was confident that the other three were possible and cut all pieces - one after the other for each section - and assembled each sector on the drawing.

One small problem turned up in that the wooden slats were a bit more than 1 cm in thickness. This was negligible at first, but when you stack 10 pieces, 1 mm quickly becomes 1 cm and all your careful and exact calculations crumble….

This is where I broke into a cold sweat, because I realized that the sections might not fit together!

I actually had to replace a couple of the puzzle pieces to save the project, which caused some more worries for the later sections.

When I was done cutting, came the time to glue the puzzle pieces together. This was one of the „impossible“ parts of the project - „You‘ll never get the pieces aligned correctly.“

Again, I started with the entrance/exit section. You have probably glued pieces of wood before and noticed that the glue is super slippery when you press the pieces together with clamps to press the surplus glue out. The pieces immediately try to escape in the direction of least pressure. With only two pieces, it‘s a bit of a nuisance and you can use a second clamp to force them into alignment. When you have several pieces that can go in three (or ten) different directions, this task can become quite frustrating and it may become possibly impossible to align all bits perfectly.

So, do it in separate steps….

I decided to glue the turns each in one step, because you can correct unnoticed slippage after setting with a bit of sanding. This way I could apply pressure with only two clamps at a time and in two directions, preventing/reducing warp and gaps due to slippage in the other directions. Next came stacking the turns and adding the perpendicular entrance and exit, again one step at a time. It takes a bit longer, but causes less frustrations afterward.

When I had done the first section, the other three became (almost) routine….

The excess glue on each side was removed just enough to get the sides plane again each time.

There were several spots where things didnt‘t align as planned, of course, but the surfaces will be sanded down later anyway, so there is hope….

The straight sections between the turns were easy - almost - because you can simply take several long slats and glue them together at once and cut them into trapezoids later on.

But, remember that you don’t want to waste wood!

If you start with a light strip on the outside and finish with dark on the inside, you can’t just cut pieces from the length with sections turned and marked 180 deg, because the inside will be light, or dark. If you put one section next to the other, you waste the large triangles in between, so you need to have the same color on both sides of the stack and mark the sections in mirror images.

When all the slats are glued together, wait and measure and check and measure again before cutting the sections….

Since I was careless and not thinking things through in the beginning, I ended up doing exactly what I wrote to avoid and having to do an extra fourth stack of straight paths - oh well….

Then a bit of sanding to straighten things, again.

If you make an interesting pattern, it is pretty boring when there is nothing in the middle but a dark space. It‘s like a picture frame without a picture.

Drawing up the life-size labyrinth, I had also designed a couple of cool center patterns and ended up with a compass rose as my favorite. A compass fits well, because the old labyrinths are often associated and oriented with sunrise/sunset or other important directions. I had all the thirtytwo little triangles cut as paper templates to make a compass rose. Then I saw that even some of the scalpel-cut paper bits weren‘t identical. How would I manage to get them identical with a thickness of 3 cm? As an inlay, it would have been tedious but possible, in solid wood with maybe 5 mm along the shortest edge and a height of 3 cm would have been sort of miraculous. I didn‘t even want to think about it….

So, I decided to do it all dark….

Then I had all sectors prepared and needed to measure the correct final sizes for each. Because they were bigger than the drawing, due to the greater thickness of the slats, I needed to recalculate. I did that on by reconstructing and recalculating directly on the sections and needed to stack additional dark sections to fill up the middle. I constructed the size so that I would end with full thicknesses of wood strips and cut off whatever may be too much in the center.

Then I decided that a little light star in the middle might be nice: „Can‘t be done - impossible.“, was the answer I got when I asked for advice.

So, I did it anyway….

Using a (huge) bandsaw, I cut (ca. 7 mm) 45 deg angled wedges out of the middle of the next to innermost dark strips on each sector and filed them to ‘perfection‘. I cut eight square sections of light wood and glued these - with the same grain-orientation - into the cuts. After filing them back down even with the dark wood, I glued the final ‚innermost‘ light sections on top. I figured that cutting and glueing the sectors would result in a star.

Don‘t forget sanding the excess glue.

Next comes the scariest part, because if you mess it up, you can start fresh, or do something more sensible….

All sections are supposed to form an octagon in the end. This means that you need to have all angles perfect! Being an octagon, the inner wedge-angles need to be 45 deg, which means that the other two angles of the triangle are 67,5 deg each, with the complementary 22,5 deg for the outside. The 22,5 deg angle became important when cutting the sectors with the miter saw.

Draw all construction lines perfectly on all sections and erase all the lines you don’t need to keep possible confusion to a minimum.

With the miter saw, you always want to put the long sections of wood along the brace and cut ideally perpendicular to the long edge. You can set the saw to cut different angles of course, but then you always have the risk that something might slip a tiny bit and ruin things.

The supervisor and his assistant did some trial cuts with some waste pieces of plywood one afternoon - without me - and told me that it’s impossible to make them fit to an octagon with the present miter saw, because it’s too inaccurate. I did lots of trial cuts with pieces of waste wood to make an octagon, readjusting the saw again and again and came to the same conclusion. Eight times one degree of error adds up to a wedge of eight degrees!!!

So, another impossible hurdle to overcome….

Since the saw could do perpendicular cuts quite well - with proper adjustment - I decided to make a 22,5 deg (!) wedge and place each sector against its outer edge to cut a simple 90 degree cut. Making the wedge was done rough with the miter saw, sanding it to the accurate angle with the belt sander.

Even though the angles were quite accurate, I decided to leave a couple of extra millimeters to be sanded, or filed, away until things fit as perfectly as possible.

So started a another big headache….

Doing test-cuts with the wedge, I had noticed that the sawblade guard would always catch on the points of the sector pieces. So I got permission to tape it out of the way, which caused a big headache for the supervisor.

My own headache got much better when I finished all the sector cuts.

Ok, then quickly came the next headache:

Now I had all the sectors lying on a board with a hole in the center of the octagon that would go away with sanding off the excess on each side of each sector. My reasoning was that I could compensate for the errors in angles by slowly sanding bits away….

A big hail to large belt-sanders! They had one with a length of over 1 m, so lots of space to hold pieces against.

The problem with belt-sanders is their inaccuracy, and high removal rate of material. That means that getting angles correct is difficult, because the moving sandpaper is statistically, but not really a planar surface, and you risk taking too much material off your work-piece too quickly. You can also remove lots of material from parts of your hands before you even feel it - so be careful!

You are also not supposed to sand against the end-grain of your work piece, because it has the tendency to catch on the sandpaper and get your work thrown across the room. That might hurt bystanders, or even damage your work. ;-)

Ok, they told me that it‘s not possible to do my sector pieces that way - once again.

So I did it anyway, because my time was running out quickly and I had lots left to do - including my other projects….

So I spent some time adjusting the sander so that the rest on its side would stay at as close to 90 degrees to the belt, as possible, in order that my cuts would remain as vertical while sanding them down, as possible. To prevent my pieces from flying across the room, should I get careless, I added a side brace. I never needed it - luckily.

As before, I started with the most critical sector - the entrance/exit. I sanded it down as accurately to the markings that I had previously constructed, as possible.

Then I went around step by step, never sanding down all the way and always putting the pieces together again and again to see the progress. It was a slow way of doing things, but in the end, I managed to match together all pieces without much notable error and almost no gaps in angles.

It certainly didn‘t end up perfect, as you can see on the photos, but I was quite relieved to get it this far.

Well, glueing the sectors turned out to be another problem, because, as with all the little puzzle pieces in the beginning, once you push from one side, all the pieces tend to run away in all other directions. With eight pieces this becomes just another headache.

I started with my favorite piece, applied glue, and went around from there, placing each piece as accurately as possible. This didn‘t work quite well - to say/describe it optimistically.

Having completed the octagon, I used a nylon strap to slowly increase the radial pressure. It took slow going and lots of readjusting the pieces again and again and again until all corners fit and stayed together halfway decently.

After the glue had set - things had moved a bit, of course - followed the usual sanding. In this case some of the corners needed to be straightened too - but good enough.

Since I wanted to have a rectagonal cutting board, the octagon needed to be made square.

This was done by adding triangular sections of wood to four sides. Instead of stacking and glueing strips of the light wood, the triangles were cut from a waste piece of the Ash boards the strips had been cut from before. The triangles were cut in a manner keeping the grain parallel to the paths of the labyrinth.

Then followed the usual glueing and sanding - this time on the big belt-sander to keep the edges of the board straight and perpendicular. According to the supervisor and his assistant, this was quite a harrowing sight…

I had just barely enough dark wood strips left to form a dark frame around the labyrinth, so I did.

I also figured that it would strengthen the whole construct.

With the dark frame the board still looked a bit unfinished - to me - and I wanted the final shape to be rectangular, so I added two more light strips on each side and - finally - another light strip onto the top and bottom edge.

In between and after came the glueing and the help of the belt-sander to straighten things.

Fin! (Almost)

Of course, the board wasn‘t quite done now. But, no more headaches! The rest is a walk in the park….

With the many steps of cutting, glueing and sanding leading up to the final board, not all surfaces allign perfectly, of course. Due to slippage under pressure a couple of sectors had pushed up and down a bit out of perfect alignment too. So, about one millimeter had to be removed on each side of the board to get an even surface. This was done with en electric sander using successively finer grained paper until pleasant to the touch. I didn‘t want a mirror surface, so I stopped a 400 grain.

The finish was done with Tung oil, which creates an impressive luster in the grain, and a final coat of linseed oil to toughen the surface.

So, I was finished and took it home to show it to the family….

They told me that they would cut off my hands, if I ever put the edge of a knife on the board!

So the board spent a little time on display, followed by a lengthier time in the basement, because it was always in the way.

That was until I decided to make it into a side table….

Sure, there were some scrap pieces left from cutting up the different sectors. And sure, I did not want to throw them away, of course. So, I played around with arranging the bits and pieces to see if I could make another board with them….

In the end, I arranged them in an oval inside a bag and poured lots of epoxy on them, with a brick on top, so the pieces don‘t float away, and forgot about it for a while….

Effectively, I was only left with about one hand full of actual wasted wood leftovers.

Months later, I had meanwhile built a sled for planing a couple of largish tree sections with my router, I came across the solid lump. After pealing off all the plastic wrapping, I decided to plane both sides to see if it‘s worth keeping.

It turned out to be a quite and decorative and interesting pattern and we‘ve been using it time and again as a platter or coaster for pots and food….

If you don‘t want to inflict any kind of damage to your table top board, you are severely limited in designing the lower section and legs of your table.

Since I only wanted to a low couch table / side table, there is not much worry about high loads and robustness. But, you don‘t want to have the top sliding off the bottom anyway.

For my tree-slices I had simply bought cheap three-legged stools with bent wooden legs at IKEA and bolted the legs to the slices - fine. I put the labyrinth on top one of them and it didn‘t look so good.

For my Cherry-Tree section, I had designed a three-legged base, but for a rectangular top, four legs look better.

I found a couple of four-legged designs online, but wasn‘t quite happy with them either.

One of those days, I had come across an old wooden slatted bedframe on my way home, that someone had placed on the sidewalk outside his house and the garbage crew had forgotten to take away. Because the wood was sound, I had broken it up and taken the bits home to use for some-or-other future project.

With the paths of the labyrinth it finally occurred to me that it might be interesting to construct a structure from the similarly thick slats as base of a small table.

I wanted four legs,

1. not protruding, so you don‘t catch your toes,
2. not vertical, because that looks boring,
3. collapsible, if possible,
4. with no permanent screws would be nice

I figured that diagonal legs from the middle of the top would give me the height I wanted and started construction from there….

The slats are bent, but glueing two slats against each other straightens the bends and makes them strong enough to stand on without breaking. No, I didn‘t just glue them all together….

Instead, I designed a light, but rigid construction, with doubly enforced large sections and single, centrally hinged struts, that can be collapsed between the larger sections, in case you move and you want to take things apart.

Instead of using permanent screws or bolts, I decided to use the ubiqitous stainless steel pegs from our IKEA Ivar shelves.

To match the design of the labyrinth, I wanted right and 45 degree angles. Placing hinges in the center of the rectangular top and angling the legs at about 45 deg down and towards the corners I came to a table height of around 45 cm - perfect for a low side-table.

The only problem was the rectangular shape of the board, but then you simply angle the intersections in the middle accordingly.

To make things easier, I drew the construction on paper in real size. It really helps finding errors quickly and helps in getting all crooked angles correct, as well as the resulting distances.

1. All the sections of slats were cut with a Japanese Kataba handsaw and a bench vise. I even got to use my dad‘s old Zyliss vise once again - they really have a cool design!
2. 
   
3. All surfaces were cleaned with an electric sander and semi-coarse grit paper to remove the old varnish and allow for the wood glue to form tight bonds.
4. 
   
5. All corners were rounded with simple files.
6. 
   
7. A template was prepared to make sure all holes in the slats were at the identical positions on all pieces.
8. 
   
9. All holed were drilled with a bench drill to make certain they are all perpendicular.
10. 
    
11. Finally, after fitting the pieces again and again to make sure that everything is correctly matched and actually fitting, the glueing started.

You always start with the most difficult parts first - at least I do, usually.

In this case, the top diagonal struts of the table are a bit critical. They hold the hinge sections beneath them and a section needs to be cut out of each, so that they can be stuck together afterwards. This cut-out needs to be as tightly fitting as possible, because it it essential to the later lateral stability of the table.

The vertical cuts were done with the Kataba to the depth of half the width of the slats - from the top on one section, from the bottom on the other. The remaining sections were removed using a chisel and the surfaces straightened and smoothed with a file. After putting the two sections together, it looked like it might fit pretty well with the board, eventually.

Of course, I removed too much and had to correct later on….

Since they are to be all the same, the eight leg slats, as well as the four struts, were cut, stacked together and collectively filed and sanded.

Next it was time to drill all the holes.

On the top diagonals and the legs, this was pretty easy by careful measurement and using the table drill.

For the upper leg-ends that connect to the hinges and struts, I prepared a simple jig from scraps, by drilling an open hole using a hole-bit with a diameter just large enough to admit the width of one of the slats. This was glued to another scrap piece, and the combination centered and fixed under the drill.

With this setup all holes were quickly drilled with the same positions on all parts.

The next logical step was to put everything together, of course.

Because the construct is quite simple, you only need twelve of the IKEA bolts. Since the holes are drilled with the table drill, the bolts fit quite tightly. The assembly is easy and quickly done.

Putting the board on top gives a good idea of how it will look in the end.

At this moment the board will still easily slide off, though.

In the beginning, the ends of the top diagonal struts were uneven rectagonal stumps. To finish the table, they needed to be shaped to fit the cornes of the board. As the board is rectangular in shape, the ends could not be simply cut with 45 deg angles. Instead of measurements and semi-tedious calculations, this was simply done by placing the top on the new base and marking the corners with a pencil. The excess material was then cut off with the Kataba - I love that saw!

To keep the board from falling off the stand, I needed to make corners that would block it.

To keep them as unobtrusive as possible I used 1 mm thick, 1 cm high, 90 deg aluminum profiles I had used for a tensegrity project - that had failed due to stability issues.

I cut short sections. In the middle of these, I cut out 90 degree triangle sections and bent the result to fit the corners of the labyrinth board.

After drilling small holes into them with a small electric drill, they were bolted to the diagonals so that they held tightly to the board.

To prevent scratching the board the corners were covered with a thin clear adhesive foil - usually used as book protection in schools. The added foil results in a grip that lets you pick up the whole table at the board without the base falling off.

As a final measure the whole ensemble was treated to a coat of linseed oil and rubbed smooth and clean.

My daughter saw it and immediately claimed it as hers.

This was quite a lengthy project in both effort and time.

I really enjoyed making a wooden labyrinth, because it was a really big challenge and because I was told so many times that I would fail, and didn‘t!

Sometimes it really pays to be a bit tenacious and simply do what you want in spite of others.

The supervisor and his assistant were probably quite relieved to let me go, especially after I used a 30 cm vertical belt sander to plane the old 40 cm diameter hollow cherry tree setion…. No more headaches!

Building the table legs was also a lot of fun, because creating your own design and then making it actually work is always highly satisfying. Doing it with a minimalist approach is cool too.

With this part of the project, it was especially important for me to use only materials that were unused, or actually reclaimed from waste, and it worked out quite well.

I‘m happy with my labyrinth design and how I managed to implement it in wood, as well as how it combines with the base.

The others think it looks great and my daughter loves it, so it was well worth the trouble….

Always stay fascinated!