I designed a coffee table my junior year while i was taking a furniture class. The design brief was to create a piece of furniture using 9 board feet of wood, and to build it using traditional Japanese joinery methods. I plunge routed the table top to create a flat surface and then ran it through a planer.
Afterwards, i used a table saw to create the legs and a band saw to cut out the support rails. Lastly, I created mortise and tenon joints to secure the base together and used wooden buttons to secure the table top to the base.