I saw a pretty clever idea while perusing the internet and I figured I would give it a shot.  The idea is to create  a small wooden “upside down U” that fits over the armrest of your couch or chair.  That way you can set stuff on it (like beer).

So here we go.  I had a decent walnut board left over, so I figured I would use a portion of that for this project.  After taking some measurements of the couch armrest and my board I needed a little more width.  Maple saves the day.  The dimensions of of this “U” are 8″ inside opening, 6″ tall legs, 14″ long.  I figured I didn’t need very thick construction, so I resawed the walnut down from 6/4 to ~3/4

After the resaw, I flattened one side with hand planes and ran it through my planer.  I should have done a better job flattening.  I ended with a little bow in each board.

I cut the pieces down to rough size and glued up the top

Once the glue dried I took the top out of the clamps and scraped the glue off.  I then ran it through the planer to flush everything up.  Once that was complete I squared up the ends on my crosscut sled and table saw.  For the joints I was initially thinking butt or rabbet reinforced with dowels.  The boards turned out pretty thin after all the planing.  A little less than 1/2 inch and I didn’t want to run the risk of splitting anything.  So, I went with just the rabbet joint.  I set up my dado stack and sacrificial fence and cut some rabbets.

I added some glue and clamps and let it sit.

I found that I had a real difficult time adding pressure without the free ends moving on me.  If I make another one, I will cut some scrap spacers to hold them in place.  Should have thought of that before I excitedly spread glue on everything.

After the glue up I block planed all the edges flush.  In order to eliminate any blowout on the back side, I clamped a small block on the end.

Here it is all cleaned up

After hand sanding up to 220.  I applied some Medium Walnut Danish Oil.

If I make another one with maple, I won’t use the tinted Danish oil.  I don’t like how mirky it makes the Maple look.  It looks nice on the walnut though.  Once it fully cures, I will get a picture of it on the couch.

After 5 days of being busy with other stuff I finally got around to applying a little wax to my armrest table and took into the house. I actually wrote this last paragraph about my armrest table on my armrest table.