Project Information
After six months with on and off again work on our new kitchen table, I'm finally done!
This started with a trip to NC with the folks at West Penn Hardwoods. Rocky and his crew were very accommodating allowing us to pick through several large slabs and find the one that fit our needs after he offered to cut the first six feet off of a fourteen foot slab, as seen in the last picture. While we were there, James from Odie's Oil was there demo'ing their products. I liked what I saw and decided right then and there that was how I was going to finish it.
When I received the slab a few weeks later, I noticed there was about a heavy .25" cup within the 1.375" overall thickness. I had to think this through so as not to lose too much thickness in the flattening process or the final table would be too thin. My thought was to create a steel substructure to serve two purposes, one to create a stiff flat skeleton that I could lessen or eliminate the cupping altogether, and two, serve as a sled to keep a coplanar sub surface to slide this in two passes through my 4' x 4' CNC…again the slab length was 6'.
I first started to sand and carve out the bark off of the undulating live edges. For the most part, I followed the natural contour of the edges, but I did take some creative liberties to wander and embellish a little bit. I then cleaned up both cross cut edges. I rounded over the cross cut edges, fully sanded up to 1500 and finished the underside of the table, which was a good learning trial run for the top show side I did later. I filled several small bark inclusions with clear epoxy and used the Odie's deep penetrating oil prior to several coats of the Odie's oil to finish.
At that point things sat for a bit while I researched what type of table legs I wanted and if I could find a fabricator that could help me with the custom steel substructure referenced above as well as fitting that to a cool leg structure. I found Evan at ECon Welding & Fabrication on Etsy and after several conversations and drawings I loved his spider leg design and we got that started. I had the steel powder coated with a matte black. Once those arrived I bolted the substructure to the finished bottom side of the table and took that to my CNC to flatten it.
After several dry runs and much sweating and anxiety, I started to skim off several hundreds of an inch at a time. It took four or five passes to complete it. The sled idea worked well although the steel skeleton was about .125" out of being perfectly flat. But the skeleton virtually pulled the cupped slab straight so I wound up only losing between a 1/16" and 1/8" off of two of the corner sectors and it is dead flat on the top surface!
I followed the same sanding and finishing procedure as on the bottom side as I did on the top. After several minor blemishes that took me over a month to eliminate, I'm starting the life of our kitchen table with an amazing top side of the table. I know with usage it will get worn in, but the natural beauty of this wood is spectacular. The folks at Odie's recommended a cleaning solution you make yourself from two of their products and I must say it works great, I'd highly recommend it!
This started with a trip to NC with the folks at West Penn Hardwoods. Rocky and his crew were very accommodating allowing us to pick through several large slabs and find the one that fit our needs after he offered to cut the first six feet off of a fourteen foot slab, as seen in the last picture. While we were there, James from Odie's Oil was there demo'ing their products. I liked what I saw and decided right then and there that was how I was going to finish it.
When I received the slab a few weeks later, I noticed there was about a heavy .25" cup within the 1.375" overall thickness. I had to think this through so as not to lose too much thickness in the flattening process or the final table would be too thin. My thought was to create a steel substructure to serve two purposes, one to create a stiff flat skeleton that I could lessen or eliminate the cupping altogether, and two, serve as a sled to keep a coplanar sub surface to slide this in two passes through my 4' x 4' CNC…again the slab length was 6'.
I first started to sand and carve out the bark off of the undulating live edges. For the most part, I followed the natural contour of the edges, but I did take some creative liberties to wander and embellish a little bit. I then cleaned up both cross cut edges. I rounded over the cross cut edges, fully sanded up to 1500 and finished the underside of the table, which was a good learning trial run for the top show side I did later. I filled several small bark inclusions with clear epoxy and used the Odie's deep penetrating oil prior to several coats of the Odie's oil to finish.
At that point things sat for a bit while I researched what type of table legs I wanted and if I could find a fabricator that could help me with the custom steel substructure referenced above as well as fitting that to a cool leg structure. I found Evan at ECon Welding & Fabrication on Etsy and after several conversations and drawings I loved his spider leg design and we got that started. I had the steel powder coated with a matte black. Once those arrived I bolted the substructure to the finished bottom side of the table and took that to my CNC to flatten it.
After several dry runs and much sweating and anxiety, I started to skim off several hundreds of an inch at a time. It took four or five passes to complete it. The sled idea worked well although the steel skeleton was about .125" out of being perfectly flat. But the skeleton virtually pulled the cupped slab straight so I wound up only losing between a 1/16" and 1/8" off of two of the corner sectors and it is dead flat on the top surface!
I followed the same sanding and finishing procedure as on the bottom side as I did on the top. After several minor blemishes that took me over a month to eliminate, I'm starting the life of our kitchen table with an amazing top side of the table. I know with usage it will get worn in, but the natural beauty of this wood is spectacular. The folks at Odie's recommended a cleaning solution you make yourself from two of their products and I must say it works great, I'd highly recommend it!