Our Process

Every hand created table from my shop starts as a tree which is then felled and cut into log lengths and loaded onto trucks bound for a sawmill. This was my line of work for 30+ years. The logs are then milled into dimension lumber or slabs, graded and sent on to a dry kiln where it will be dried for a period of weeks to months.

                  My part of the process starts when the slabs leave the dry kilns as I use a lifetime of contacts in the wood industry to purchase just the right slabs for your dream table. Every person,s dream is as different as their imaginations and personal tastes.

                   One end of the spectrum would be a table from a single slab of wood with the live edges on the outside, or sawn off to make a straight edged table. This is most common in smaller tables, however it is possible to find slabs big and wide enough to make something the size of a dining table in one piece. These very large slabs, while not exceptionally rare are not the norm and can be quite pricey. A similar table can be made by sawing the live edge slab in half and glueing pieces in the middle to achieve the desired width. This process also produces a beautiful solid wood table.

                    While I can certainly build a beautiful solid hardwood table, it is not where my own personal passion lies. I prefer to seek out the most defective slabs with the most character- holes, cracks, splits and crazy wood grain that I can find to build a really unique piece using epoxy, both clear and colored.

                     The kiln drying process is both necessary and  hard on your wood slab. Its necessary to insure against future warping  or splitting in the future and to kill any bugs that were living in the tree. No-one wants to see a bug come crawling out of their dining room table! The drying process almost always introduces some amount of warp or twist to the now fully dried slab. The first work I will then do is to put the slab through a flattening process. This process involves usually a few hours on the work bench with a router in a slab flattening jig, milling off the surface of the slab till one true, perfectly flat surface is achieved. The other side can then either be flattened in the same way or in a planer.

                      The next step is very hard to explain as it is simply art from the mind of the craftsman. This is the layout process where the wood is cut and fitted to make a table of the correct shape and dimensions. Understandably, this is the most difficult as well as my favorite part of the process, because what I make is the creation of my own hands and mind.  This freshly formed ensemble of pieces is then ready to go into a mold. Each mold must be custom built to fit the pieces going into it. Once the soon to be table is positioned into the mold, it is off to the epoxy room.

                       In epoxy, a deep pour epoxy will be flooded into all of the cracks, voids, nooks and crannies of the piece. This epoxy can either be poured in crystal clear or mixed with any color of pigment you desire to match your home. Deep pour epoxies take 4 to 5 days to dry before they are workable. The piece that leaves the epoxy room scarcely resembles a beautiful piece of  furniture, but after  some amount of hours to days later of cutting, grinding ,  and sanding, the final product starts to take shape. At this point I will need to make decisions about how to best protect your table from future warps or cracks. Depending on the piece this usually involves cutting out channels on the bottom with a router and imbedding either cross grained wood strips or metal.

                       The final step in the building process is finishing. After the piece has been sanded to perfection you will have the choice of several different finishes varying from a matte finish to an extreme high gloss finish. I also have available a finish that is a bit different from the norm in that it has a bit of texture to it, and is  extremely durable, and heat resistant.