Live edge coffee table with router inlays - Part 1 of 3

I mill most of the wood that I use for projects with an Alaska chainsaw mill (see two recent posts in the Wood & Lumber forum for more on that).

My brother is an avid birdwatcher and photographer, and three years ago he said that he wished I would build a live edge coffee table for him. I built the table for his 2020 Christmas present. For those who are not into details, I am posting photos of the finished table here at the top. For you detail folks, keep scrolling down. There may be a limit on how many photos one post can contain, so I will show this project in multiple parts.

I inlayed images of 34 different birds that are either native to Oregon, or migrate through here. The table is made of bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum; the largest maple native to Oregon). Often bigleaf maple has nice figured grain such as the "quilted" grain in the slabs that I used to make the table.

I used the following woods for inlays: Padauk, eastern white maple, eastern redcedar, wenge, purple heart, zebra wood, Oregon bitter cherry, and black walnut. The table is 54" long, 31" wide and 22" tall.








Here goes the build description from the start, with details:


My friend Alan and I milled this bigleaf maple on my property in 2018. I stacked and stickered it (with ends painted) and it air dried for three summers. The air dry rule-of-thumb of "one year per inch of thickness" works well. By the fall of 2020 it was cured and ready to use.

My planer is only 13" wide, but Creative Woodworking is a shop in Portland (an hour drive from where I live) where woodworkers can bring in their slabs to run through one of their 50" planers (the planers also can be set for sanding). At $75.00/hour you can plane a lot of slabs. Creative Woodworking also does resawing and they have all kinds of huge woodworking machines. We Oregon woodworkers are lucky to have access to a shop like this!

Here we are running the slabs through one of the two 50" planers


Back at my shop I routed the edges before gluing the two pieces of the top together


Next I used the table router to put grooves in the slabs for #2 biscuits before glue-up




Then glue and clamping overnight


After I had glued the top, legs and shelf together, I made another trip back to Creative Woodworking to run the pieces through the planer one more time. The top and legs are 2" thick and the shelf is 3/4" thick.

I used an auto body profile tool to mark the arches that I cut out of the bottom of each leg.



Double sided tape holds down a pattern for the mortises on the underside of the table top. The legs will fit into the mortises. I used a 3/4" bit with bearing and cut mortises 2: wide and 1 1/4" deep.


I inlayed two 1/4" thick (2" wide, 1" deep) steel C channels into the underside of the table to prevent warpage. The C channels are fastened to steel threaded inserts. I also inlayed four Oregon white oak ribs. This view also shows the mortises for the legs. Looking back on this, I think that the four white oak ribs was big time overkill. I won't do that on the table I am building now.


Next I cut 3/4" wide, 1 1/4" deep mortises into each leg. The shelf will fit into these mortises.


The mortises are done and its time to do a dry run fit up



It all fits together perfectly


I will continue with the inlaying in part 2 of this build thread.