The Big Burl!

There she was. How could I resist
a beautiful burl like this?

During my research I'd discovered a lumber yard and sawmill in Doylestown called Bucks County Hardwoods that sounded like a good place to source out some lumber. Almost everything they have is local, meaning no shipping, etc., which makes it a green operation. I like that. One thing I have decided to do in my woodworking is to use local lumber when at all possible. Plus, I think it's kind of neat to look at a table and say, "you know that walnut came from a tree in Bensalem."

So I decided to head up one Saturday morning to see what they had. I wandered around for a few minutes, heard some machinery going in one of the buildings so I headed in, where I met the owner, John. I told him I was interested in just taking a look around. John was a really nice guy. We got to talking about politics and seemed to have similar thoughts on the subject, which I think may have played a part in the deal I was going to get on this particular day. John gave me a tour of the whole operation. I was really impressed. They're pretty much capable of re-sawing and surfacing anything. They had a large amount of lumber air drying, both dimensional and flitch sawn. Interestingly enough, when I walked up to one boule stack of walnut, John said, "oh, that's the Nakashima stuff. That's all reserved." I told John I was familiar with their work and he said, "Mira comes here every now and then. She gets first crack at everything we bring in and reserves stuff." That was a bit of a letdown to hear. Would I get anything worthwhile if it's been gone through?

We headed into a large storage barn and John showed me their current flitch sawn boards. As I walked around, a few distinct large slabs caught my eye. I thought I knew what they were but being a newbie at this I wasn't 100% certain. "Ummm.. is that redwood burl?" I was surprised to see it because I at least knew redwood burl mostly came from CA. Sure enough, John said, "A buddy of mine had a lumber business but unfortunately went out of business, so he had this stuff laying around and sold it to me for cheap." One particular slab really drew me to turn it over and have a look. I asked him how much it was, and he looked it up in a little book and said "$120." This was a big slab. It had to be 5' x 3.5' and about 2.5" inches thick. I immediately said I'd take it (thinking that we had yet to have a coffee table in our formal living room). Unfortunately I only had $100 in my wallet, to which John said, "don't worry about it." So I got the slab for $100. I left feeling like I'd hit the lottery for a small fortune. After googling just what a slab like this normally costs, I felt even better. Depending on where I looked, I got it for maybe 1/8 the price.

Sometimes craigslist smiles upon you and you just have to
accept what's coming to you. A light sanding and two coats
of tung oil made the base look amazing.

And then the power of craigslist reared its head. I often scour furniture on craigslist randomly just to see what's out there. My wife and I have made some pretty good scores. I happened to see this cool looking Danish teak table base on there and it was priced at only $35, which seemed great to me. Sure enough, we headed to Philly and checked it out. It needed to be refinished, but otherwise the thing was solid. It's pretty obvious at one point it had a glass top. Me being the woodworker and all, we didn't need a top. So we bought it, not knowing exactly what we were going to do with it. Shortly thereafter my wife said, "could you use that as the base for the redwood burl table?"
Hmmmm... good question. I did some quick measuring and plopped the slab on top of the base. We both looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

I loved the look of butterfly keys
like this and knew my slab was perfect
for adding them to span the gap.

So, it was time to actually get started on the slab. I'd seen some Nakashima pieces that utilized really cool, elongated butterfly keys to span gaps or holes in slabs, so I knew right away that I wanted to see if I could swing that. My only fear was that a screw up in this part of the slab could be disastrous. Also, my experience to this point was only with walnut. I didn't know how redwood burl reacted to machining, sanding, or anything really. I know it was less dense than walnut simply from handling the slab. Maybe I was about to find out how redwood burl reacts to a router?

Shortly in to making the mortises for the keys, I'd really
started to feel comfortable with the process. Maybe
being careful but confident was all it took?

I shaped my keys with the bandsaw and traced out where I wanted them on the slab. Then I started routing. A few minutes into routing the unthinkable happened, a piece of redwood burl flew off the edge of the span where I was routing. It was maybe the size of a half dollar. I picked it up, slightly mortified, and stared at it. When it comes to woodworking, I'd heard "you can almost always hide mistakes" before. So, I thought my only recourse was to try to glue it back in place. Luckily, a little epoxy and a clamp did the trick. Since there's so many lines in the grain anyway, you can't see where the piece broke off in the finished table.

The little keys seemed like a
nice touch and I liked the placement.

There were a few other spots in the slab that I thought could use something... both areas had small cracks that had formed; nothing major, but I thought maybe adding smaller butterfly keys to those areas might look cool as well as serve a purpose. So I made some small keys and got to it.
After the keys were in, it was just a matter of routing some small notches on the underside that would sit on the base, then sanding and finishing the slab. I did some experimenting with the finish and finally settled upon something that I liked. I'd seen far too many redwood burl tables with a bazillion coats of poly on them. I knew I didn't want that, but I also wanted the grain to really pop in the light. What I settled on was a combination of a clear gel varnish and single coat of satin poly. I am really pleased with how the table came out. I even considered selling it, but I decided since it was only my second woodworking project, I should hold onto it.

The two keys, sanded flush.

I recently was speaking with a local restauranteur who also happens to be a collector of art and antiques and we got into a discussion about my woodworking. He told me of his collection of various mid-century pieces and of his affinity for George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi.
I showed him pictures of this redwood burl table and he said I had, "it." I was humbled and asked what he meant by that and he said "you've got the eye for this. You know just where things should go and what's pleasing to the eye." I was really thrilled to hear this. I mean, being an artist and graphic designer I've always had a sense of spacial relationships etc., but being new at woodworking I'm not 100% confident in my abilities. Hearing this from him made my day.
And so the redwood burl coffee table now lives in our living room. At one point in the afternoons the light comes in our front bay window and the grain just gets set afire. An uncle of mine saw it this past Christmas and told me I could sell it for thousands, but really, seeing it and knowing I made it is enough for me.

A close-up of one of the small butterfly keys I added. You
can also see the amazing "birds' eye" grain going on here.

I love the swirls that cascade down the side here.

From certain angles it looks like the table defies gravity.

That was not planned but I love it!

The coffee table

What I was starting with, after cutting off
about 17" from one end for a leg.

There's something about simply having that big slab of wood around. It's all about the possibilities. It's also a little scary, especially when you walk in the door carrying it and you tell your wife what you paid for it, and what your plan is.

Having never done anything like it before, I was definitely nervous. I didn't want to screw anything up and I knew I was going to need a lot of assistance, especially with how to use both power and hand tools. Having my father-in-law show me every step before I did it was invaluable. In some cases, he'd step in and do things (like cleaning up some of the mortises with a chisel. I was so slow with the chisel!) in the interest of saving time. I spent many weekends working on this table, and my father-in-law would basically have to stop what he was doing each time I finished a step.

First things first: the slab was not flat and was seriously cupped. If I was going to have anything worth its salt I was going to have to make this thing flat. My father-in-law started me off with hand planing the slab leg I'd cut off.

I was pretty nervous using a router for the first time.
However my focus was on going nice and
slow so I didn't make any mistakes.

Hand planing was hard work, but it did the trick. Next I had to do something about the crack, or "check", in the leg, as well as the long one in the table top. Nakashima is well known for his use of "butterfly keys", which are essentially structural elements meant to stabilize cracks or any other areas in wood that may need strengthening. They keep cracks from getting worse. I chose to make mine from gaboon ebony, which is a very hard, dark, strong wood from Africa. So, I had to use a router in order to make the mortises for these butterfly keys. A router? Yep. I'd never used one of those either. Time to practice. Oh yeah, I'd also have to cut the keys themselves using a bandsaw. I'd never used one of those either!

The first thing I ever routed.
It was pretty rough.

So it was time to rout my first real mortise for a butterfly key. Luckily after squaring it up with a chisel it turned out just fine. Next it was a matter of positioning and placing two butterfly keys in the actual table top. I got those in and it was time to focus on joining that slab leg to the underside of the table top. I researched and found how Nakashima handled joints like this. It was usually mortise and tenon joinery, with bit of math mixed in. I figured out how many tenons I should make and their lengths and widths, then used the bandsaw and a handsaw to cut them. My father-in-law helped me set up a jig to rout a rabbet on the underside of the top because I'd chosen not to flatten the bottom in order to preserve some of the thickness of the slab. Then I used the same jig to help me rout the mortises.

After some fine tuning of the mortises with a chisel, I lined the mortises with epoxy and tapped the slab leg home. It ended up going in perfectly square!
I bought some walnut leg blanks to turn two tapered legs for the other side of the table. I went as far as to trace a Nakashima leg in Adobe Illustrator so I could make my legs the same exact dimensions. After some instruction on the lathe from my father-in-law, I jumped right in and turned the legs. I was really happy with the result! I tapped a bolt into the legs and fashioned some steel plates to serve as a mount for them and finally screwed them in place. The table was really coming together now. All that was left was more sanding and the finish.

The table assembled, before
final sanding and finishing.

I went with a natural tung oil finish, which proved to be a long process in and of itself. The first coat went on with a 50/50 mix with mineral spirits. Each successive coat was 100% tung oil. I've since learned that not even at Nakashima do they use a 100% tung oil finish because it takes so long to dry and cure. Luckily everything really came together towards the end of the project. Second to the table being done, the most rewarding part was seeing the table together, with the joints being solid and square. A check with a level showed that the top was dead-on too. I couldn't have been more satisfied. And so, it was time to take this table home. It was something to really be proud of. Would I have done a thing or two differently on it? Maybe. But it was my first woodworking project and it surpassed anything I imagined when I started.

I really love the satin-like finish. I am not a fan of poly finishes.
I hate when a piece of furniture looks like its coated in plastic
and soaking wet all the time!

A look at the finished top.

An Idea is Planted

Something like this would be perfect in our living room!

Well, here I am, embarking upon a new chapter of my life. If you would have told me a few years ago that I'd be making furniture I wouldn't have believed you. I was never very "handy." I didn't learn much growing up about tools and how to use them. In fact as of a few years ago a tool box, some screwdrivers, a hammer and a drill were the extent of my tool collection. A lot has changed since then. After my future wife moved in with me a few years ago, I gained a new interest in making my place look "cool." My wife had a huge influence on me of course. Gone were the days where a $40 coffee table constituted something stylish and functional. I started scouring the internet, looking for something that suited our style. We both loved mid-century modern decor and modern and contemporary aesthetics. I stumbled upon the work of a Japanese-American woodworker named George Nakashima and was instantly impressed and intrigued.

George Nakashima sits on his famous cantilevered "Conoid Chair"

I hadn't heard of him before, simply because I hadn't really ever delved that far into modern design. So, our initial thought was to buy a table like this from somewhere. Shortly thereafter we realized just how much a table like that costs. Some were upwards of $2,000+. Antiques were even more. Having recently refinished a chair my wife had from her college days, I declared that I would instead build a table...

My original plan seemed quick and easy to me. I was simply going to go to a local lumber yard, buy a live edge slab of some species of wood, make it flat and sand and finish it, then screw in 3 pre-made, tapered Danish-style legs.

Enter: the father-in-law. My father-in-law is an award-winning decoy carver. He's made his fair share of furniture too and done it well. He has a shop with nearly anything and everything a woodworker could need. When he got wind of my intentions to make this "easy" coffee table, he said, "you're going to build this the right way." After some hesitation I agreed it was the best thing to do.

One of the many buildings available to tour on the Nakashima
property, many of which George built with his own hands.
George Nakashima came from humble beginnings and he
and his family suffered many hardships before he emerged as
a prominent figurehead in the history of furniture design.

So, I researched the hell out of Nakashima's furniture via the web, finding out as much as I could. I quickly realized Nakashima had passed away in 1998, but his daughter was carrying on his legacy in New Hope, PA, designing new furniture and also producing the classic Nakashima pieces. And, the best news was that their studios and workshops were free to tour! Naturally I was thrilled that I could not only view the kind of pieces I imagined making, but also speak with the fine craftsmen who were producing them. Visiting this wonderful place has proved invaluable to me in my research; it's also humbling and inspiring to see just what people are capable of making.

The property is filled with beautiful
examples of Nakashima's furniture.

Next I embarked on my first actual woodworking project. Being in Pennsylvania has turned out to be ideal when it comes to getting good lumber. The hardwood forests of PA are famous for their timber. I found a lumber yard close by and impulsively picked out a walnut slab I thought would work. Then it was a matter of getting over to the father-in-laws in NJ to work on my first project... a project that would take much longer than anticipated, but in the end was rewarding in many ways, the least of which was having something to put a drink on while my wife and I watched television.