Synopsis: This reproduction of a 160-year-old French Regency pedestal table has many interesting details, not to mention a few challenges. Crafted of walnut, each piece is either curved or has a compound angle. Custom cabinet maker John Zeitoun designed a few jigs to make construction easier. He shaped the curved parts on the triangular base with a router attached to a trammel jig. A circle cutter on the drill press was used to shape a stack of disks into elegant feet, with no need for a lathe. And the six-sided tapered column, for which each segment has compound beveled edges, was cut on the tablesaw. A threaded steel rod feeds through each section of the table, holding it together.

I love flipping through books of antique furniture and looking over pieces at garage sales, and I jump at the challenge of reproducing an antique in my shop. Such was the…