Finished photo first

Earlier this spring, I had a family friend clearing out his shop and picked up 150ish board feet of Black Walnut for $2/bdft.  I've been finding as many projects as I can to use it

What's not used is stored up out of the way.  I have another shelf not shown

Not shown as some of my photos didn't save, but I just got a new jointer allowing me to actually mill most of this walnut.  I milled 6 boards down for the top and bottom shelf.  This is after the milling obviously, starting to glue up my panels.  

Top shelf on the left, bottom shelf on the right.  I used dyed epoxy in the knot holes.

Started on the frame next.  This would be painted black to match some other furniture so saw no need to use more expensive lumber.  These are cut to length.

Started laying out for 1/2" tenons

Cheeks cut first on all pieces

Shoulders cut next

Staring to layout lines for mortises

Knowing the mortises will be rounded corners, I cut the corners off the tenons.

Shown below on my bench is my new shoulder plane I used to sneak up on a perfect tenon fit.  Love it.  Its a woodriver

Started mortises using a 1/4" forstner bit, but it took forever.  I did 4 this way, and 4 by dropping them on a up-spiral bit on my router table.  That went much faster.

All frame pieces cut and ready to go.  New jointer has already been adopted as a new horizontal place to set stuff when not in use.  

Starting the dry fit of my frame.

The bottom shelf will be a dado, I had to sneak up on the perfect fit, removing shims as I went.  I'm not great at getting the dado stack just right from the beginning

Starting actual cuts on the legs.  Also lost in the photo graveyard is the process of using my taper jig to cut inside tapers on the bottom 6" of the legs

First frame glue up. Side first

I made a last minute decision to go ahead and glue in the bottom shelf while gluing the frame to make sure I didn't stress the glue joints when putting it in.  Because the dados were relatively snug, I thought it might jar the legs too much.  I just took a Japanese handsaw to cut the shelf 1.5" proud of the legs.  Again, pictures of this didn't save

First coat of Waterlox going on.  Did a total of 3 coats, and in a few weeks, I'll knock back the gloss with paste wax and steel wool

Just another pic from further away.

Base painted and top shelf on.  Hard to tell from the photo, but the top shelf has a round-over profile on bottom edge.  

Some close up of the dado and figure

More pretty walnut figure