Project Information
There were not many firsts for me in this project, but pretty much everything was a first for me at this scale. Final dimensions are 7' long, 40" wide, and 1.5" thick. The top is figured walnut, the base normal black walnut, and the accent wood is bubinga.
The boards for the top were from a flitch of eight 8.5' long, 15" wide, 10/4 half live edge slabs. The length of these boards mean that my 12" jointer/planer took too much off too much wood and the one board I did this way ended up 1" thick on the end (it was also exhausting flattening a 125 pound board 1/16" at a time). I ended up building a router plane jig, and then had to bump up an already planned shop project and build an additional bench as my 60" long work bench wasn't long enough for these boards either.
The finish on the top was in several steps:
1. Layer of dewaxed shellac mixed with black walnut dye applied and then sanded down to accentuate the figure
2. Two layers of general finishes matte oil and urethane finish
3. One layer of waterlox original gloss finish
I was originally going to stop at step 2, but that figure looked so good glossy that I just had to try it out. So far it still looks great after a fair bit of use and with minimal need for cleaning.
It was a lot of work but I'm really happy with how this turned out. Next project up is to replace my dinning room chairs (in progress) and then taking advantage of the rest of this set of figured walnut to make a matching coffee table and buffet.
The boards for the top were from a flitch of eight 8.5' long, 15" wide, 10/4 half live edge slabs. The length of these boards mean that my 12" jointer/planer took too much off too much wood and the one board I did this way ended up 1" thick on the end (it was also exhausting flattening a 125 pound board 1/16" at a time). I ended up building a router plane jig, and then had to bump up an already planned shop project and build an additional bench as my 60" long work bench wasn't long enough for these boards either.
The finish on the top was in several steps:
1. Layer of dewaxed shellac mixed with black walnut dye applied and then sanded down to accentuate the figure
2. Two layers of general finishes matte oil and urethane finish
3. One layer of waterlox original gloss finish
I was originally going to stop at step 2, but that figure looked so good glossy that I just had to try it out. So far it still looks great after a fair bit of use and with minimal need for cleaning.
It was a lot of work but I'm really happy with how this turned out. Next project up is to replace my dinning room chairs (in progress) and then taking advantage of the rest of this set of figured walnut to make a matching coffee table and buffet.