The client for this table had a few goals in mind when he started out. First and foremost, he wanted the entire table to be made out of one tree. He had a friend living in Independence, Oregon, who had felled a Big Leaf Maple tree and also happened to have a chainsaw mill. They milled the tree into 2-inch thick slabs and set it aside to air dry.
When the wood was delivered, I had three book-matched slabs; two of the slabs were matched really well and were to be used for the top. Unfortunately, they were too narrow to make for an adequate-sized tabletop. To correct this, I used the center of the third slab to be the center of the table. The grain and color matched perfectly; you can only tell there is a third piece if you look closely under a racking light.
Once I put the top together, I used the remaining wood to build the legs. The client let me have quite a bit of leeway with the joinery style for the legs. He sent me a picture of some joinery he liked. However, the joinery was really roughly cut, and everything in my client’s house was very elegant. Therefore, I refined the joinery in the pictures he sent me and used a more traditional style of arts and crafts through tenons.
The joinery fit perfectly with the décor in his house, and using the remaining wood from the top, the legs look like they grew from the tabletop. All in all, it turned out to be an elegant-style table.
Another goal was to use a local artisan and build it as environmentally friendly as possible. My client had a beautiful house sitting on a hill in Portland, Oregon, where he had outfitted the house with a rainwater system. The showers and toilets were all operated using that famous never-ending supply of Oregon rainwater. He had also gone through the steps to landscape his property to be certified as a bird sanctuary. With my client’s passion for being environmentally friendly, we used a zero VOC finish for his table.
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