right, the top......

the outside is rough carved first, to an arch (whoda thunk it?)


then I set the pillar drill to about 15 mm and drilled a bunch of holes all over the inside. I removed the wood on the inside down to the depth of the holes

Then a LOAD of fine carving to smooth the inside.

Now, the top is roughly 12 mm thick all over, but it needs to come down to about 5mm before I start fine tuning.

I need to do 2 things. sharpen my chisels, and rig a set of calipers to measure the thickness as I go, because after about 8 hours work, I REALLY don't want to stick the chisel through the top!!