Another Legacy Redwood Poject Piece

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted, so let's get back into it!

In preparing for an upcoming show, I was casting about for ideas of what to make that was new and different, and I remembered that I had designed a room divider/screen for the Legacy Redwood project that I've written about over the past few years. So after consulting with the client to get the OK, I went for it with the screen.

This piece was designed to take advantage of the unique shape of one of the slabs that we had that included an interesting void from an old burn scar ...

 

The only problem was that after 20-odd years out in the weather, there was a lot of box checking, and so there was a good chance that any slices that were milled off of it would be very fragile, at best. But, no matter, I took it down to Steve Jackel's place in Watsonville, Jackel Enterprises, put it on their band mill, and we started slicing. 

Not surprisingly, as the slices came off, they did, indeed, start to fall apart as we lifted them. But I managed to get them back to the shop with their pieces taped together and then went about stabilizing them.

To give these slices some structural stability I basically soaked them in epoxy. First, the pieces were assembled in their correct places, then the whole slice was covered with self-adhesive carpet protector film, to act as a giant piece of tape.

The slice was then flipped over and two-part epoxy was simply poured over the entire slice and allowed to soak in. Just as in finishing with oil, as the epoxy soaked into areas and became dry, more epoxy was poured on.

 After the epoxy set, the film was removed, the slice was flipped, and more epoxy was poured onto the second side. In the photo below, you can see the slice on the left has been partially sanded.

The epoxy did a great job stabilizing the slices. So then it was just a matter of making the frames and assembling.The frames are made of quartersawn sapele (a type of African mahogany), and the lower panels are redwood burl from one of the other chunks in this project.

The two halves of the screen are articulated with solid wenge hinge blocks.

And the natural edges of the redwood slices are held in place with stainless steel pins.

All in all, it weighs a ton (80 lbs, to be precise) , but I think it turned out rather well. 

For more photos of the finished piece, check out the shop's Facebook page in the near future.

The Legacy Redwood Project Continues

After a hectic Spring, I finally had a chance to tackle the first furniture piece from the legacy redwood project. The first "chunk" to be used was really more of a waste piece that was left over after all the larger pieces for milling were separated from the original round. It was a funny little triangular piece whose shape was complete happenstance. 

 

This piece had a big bark inclusion and had many large cracks and splits that precluded slicing it up. So, the task was to see what could be made of it as is. After playing around with various orientations I settled on a rather unconventional plan to use if tipped up on its point as a console table base. 

 

The real trick to this piece was to keep 70 lbs of wood and glass stable. You can see in this drawing that the original idea was to have a steel post inserted into the bottom of the wood. After more thought and consultation with my personal engineering guru, David, that idea was abandoned for an approach that involved a steel bracket that could cradle the slab and bolt to it. I had the bracket fabricated by local metal artists Paul and Forrest Cheney of Cheney Metals. The bracket bolts to the solid wenge base, and then attaches to the wood slab with lag screws.

Before the wood could be mounted in the bracket, though, the severe checking would have to be dealt with to stabilize the slab. To do that, I ran two 16" long screws made for log cabin construction all the way into the slab parallel to each side to bridge the major sections of the slab.

Once everything was secured, it was just a matter of adding a glass top, along with a steel rod to support the glass in the bark void.

With a good penetrating oil finish the figure really popped out, and this little afterthought of a chunk became a beautiful piece of furniture.

The biggest problem my client will have now is deciding which side to display. 

Stay tuned for the next installment as this project continues on.

 

 

Legacy Redwood Project: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

After a flurry of activity in the shop at the end of the year, I finally got a chance to take the next step on the legacy redwood project. That entailed reloading all the big chunks I had cut back in November into the truck and taking them out to Dave Merchant's milling operation at Out of the Woods in Bonny Doon. 

Dave's got a great set-up, with several types of mills. 

The purpose of this trip was to remove the weathered outer surfaces of the chunks to try to assess how much sound, usable material the was in each one. My "smaller" chunks, the ones less than about 25" in width were sliced on a computer-controlled Woodmizer band mill - essentially a giant horizontal band saw.

The larger chunks that didn't fit on the Woodmizer were moved to his Lucas mill. This mill uses a large circular blade that can be rotated and used in both the horizontal and vertical positions. On these chunks, material was removed in roughly 6" wide pieces.

Now that each piece has a clean face, I can assess which ones still have significant rot, which will yield usable large-scale wood, and which might yield thinner panel material. Some of the pieces look pretty promising, with some really great burl figure, but others were a little disappointing in their extent of weather-related checking, and rot.

Stay tuned to see what develops ....

A Special Legacy Project

Even though the furniture I create for my clients is always specially designed for each of them and their environment, the materials used to execute the designs, while of high quality, are usually commercially sourced.

By contrast, I've recently been given the opportunity to undertake a very special legacy project. A client recently contacted me with a very interesting challenge. She said she had a large redwood slab that she wanted turned into furniture. Turns out, "large" was an understatement! For reference, the tape measure in the picture below,  is extended 8 feet.

In all, the slab measured better than 8' by 12' by about 11" thick. It was milled from an old-growth stump on the property by her late husband, and functioned as an outdoor table for 12 years. Now she wanted to repurpose the material into furniture pieces for herself and her children. 

Obviously, the first step was to parse the slab into managable pieces in order to assess how much usable material there really was. A task that required two trips, and was helped greatly by my friend Matt Werner.

And boy, we got quite a pile.

My biggest fear was that after 12 years outdoors, the many cracks and splits in the surface might have allowed weathering and rot to extend far down inside. But to my surprise, once we started cutting, we found that only the very surface was weathered, with perfectly fresh material underneath - a testament to the weather-resistance of redwood.

The bigger problem will probably turn out to be pockets of rot caused by water being trapped underneath the slab by plywood that was used as a sub-assembly to attach legs.

The next step will be to take the slabs to a sawyer to have the top and bottom surfaces exposed and flattened .... stay tuned!

A Monumental Coffee Table

Well, its a new year and its time to get back to the too-ignored blog. So here goes.

Currently in the shop is a very substantial coffee table, made from 3" thick slabs of Claro walnut. 

Unfortunately, unlike the rendering, the actual top slab has some significant checking going on, so first order of business was to get that under control. This is an air-dried slab, so its moisture content is only down to about 12%. That means it'll experience more seasonal movement than a fully dried piece would, but the big crack can be stabilized using butterfly keys (a technique popularized by the great George Nakashima). The first step was laying out a pleasing arrangement, which I did with paper cut-outs of various sizes.

After the layout was set, the butterfly keys were milled from 4/4 wenge stock using a simple band saw jig.

Once the keys were milled and inlaid into both the top and bottom surfaces, the edges were shaped. The curves were rough cut with a jig saw, then faired using a hand plane and sanders. You can see the installed butterflies in the photo, as well.

Here's what it looks like with all the edges shaped and faired.

Check back periodically over the next few weeks to see how the base unfolds....

 

Houston, The Behemoth Has Landed!

Well, after much work and luck, the desk has been delivered and assembled. One of the biggest challenges was getting the various components of the desk, a small drawer base, the huge 8' long side case, and the big walnut slabs, to all fit together. Since it bridges the two base cases, attaching the main desktop slab was the trickiest. Its attachment to the small drawer base was pretty straightforward - four solid aluminum posts were screwed to the underside of the slab with hanger bolts, then the case was lined up and bolted to the posts from the inside.

Attaching the slab to the long side case was a little trickier. In earlier posts I described both the battens that hold the slab flat, and the milling of two walnut rounds that support the slab. The trick was to mill shaped dadoes (grooves) into the rounds that would receive the batten and keep the slab aligned. This turned out to be easier than expected using the plywood sled that was used to mill the rounds in the first place.

Each round was remounted into the sled after it was marked with alignment marks so that the sled acted as a straight, constant edge that could be indexed against the tablesaw fence.

Then, with the alignment marks still intact, the rounds were lined up with each other and with the center of the case, so that they could be attached in line. Aluminum pins were then installed to maintain the alignment of the rounds and the batten, and to keep the batten from shifting.

Once everything was lined up, the slab covering the back half of the case could be positioned and attached, then the doors and drawers reinstalled, and voila.

As you can see, there's a second set of aluminum posts that support a floating frosted glass shelf, as well as aluminum drawer and door handles, which tie the whole piece together. For a little extra flair, the panels on the fronts of the cases are veneered with custom cut pieces of figured walnut. In the end, this desk, which has both natural and tailored design features, as well as both rustic and sophisticated detailing, comes together as a unified whole with a one-of-a-kind presence.

The Desk Continues ....

Happy New Year, and welcome back after what hopefully was a good Holidays with a minimum of weather-related headaches.

Well, the desk is moving right along. The slabs are finished, and the structure of the cases is taking shape. Because the walnut slabs are so large, and in their "natural" state, some stabilization was the first order of business.

In the small slab, there were a couple of significant cracks that could continue to open over time with seasonal movement, so I bridged them with butterfly inlays. Butterflies are a very elegant way to stabilize natural slabs, first popularized by George Nakashima. It involves cutting bow tie-shaped pieces of hardwood and inlaying them across a crack. These are wenge, and are about 3/8" thick. In the picture you can see the simple band saw jig used to mill them, and the finished product.

The large desktop slab presented a different challenge. Surprisingly, there were no cracks to deal with, but at over 2" thick, and nearly 40" wide in some parts, cupping over time would be inevitable - in fact, it started to move around a we were surfacing it on the big CNC router! So braces were installed to keep it as flat as possible. Of course you can't just screw a brace to a piece of wood that size, or seasonal movement would eventually cause unwanted damage. Screwing the brace on with elongated holes to allow for movement is a popular technique, but the screw heads are unsightly. So, as with last summer's bench, the most elegant solution is sliding dovetails. To accomplish this, good stout braces of straight-grain ipe were milled with four 2" long integral dovetail pins. Matching sockets were then routed into the underside of the slab, and the brace dropped in and slid home. The dovetails allow the slab to expand and contract with environmental changes, and keep everything in plane.

With the finish on them the slabs look pretty great!



The next step is putting together the casework that these babies will sit on. The cases will be made using web frame construction, in which each part is made of a solid wood frame filled with a plywood panel. This method allows for the strength and edge/corner durability of solid wood, but avoids the problems associated with seasonal movement and cross-grain joinery. The only down side is that all those frames mean lots of frame members to cut joinery into (I'm using floating tenons) and to pre-finish before they can be assembled (the picture only shows about half the panels).

That's where we are, so stay tuned as the work progresses.

A Statement Desk

My newest commission is a large desk utilizing substantial slabs of walnut. The design is in the final phases of tweaking, but the slabs are already in hand. They came from Jim Baker in Gilroy, who specializes in large scale tree milling. They were then flattened and dressed on an impressive 5' x 22' CNC router by FrameCom, also in Gilroy.

The main desktop slab measures over 3' x 7'! This is the smaller of the two pieces. They should look great with a little sanding and some finish. Stay tuned for more as this piece develops.

Stylish Bench from Walnut Slabs

One of the great things about making wood furniture is that sometimes you get the chance to let nature do most of the work - then all you have to do is add a little bit here and there, and you get a great looking piece. This bench is just such a case. The walnut slabs, sourced from an orchard in the San Juan Bautista area, are the real star. All I had to do was add a little styling in the form of legs, and voila. It got a great response at the Marin Art Festival, and now is available for purchase. It measures roughly 70" long x 35" high, x 28" deep.

This is a look at the back and leg structure.


As you can see, the material speaks for itself.