well, the verdict is in ... the slab i wrote about back in april is now a coffee table ... on its choice to aspen, colorado this week sometime ... it was almost a desk, and then it was almost a dining table. but this client came up with the both the idea and the bucks and now it is his coffee table ... looks great and i hope he has a big couch ...
4/29 ... on the wall ... waiting to be something ... +/- 50" x 108"
top view
seated view
first step in sam making the legs .. cap the open bottoms of the 3.5" pipe and tap it for adjustable levelers ... 
then he added the plates that attach them to the table top and painted them black. simple, direct, cost effective and they look great ..
desk concept with slab below before it was finished ...
table concept ... this client switched to and elm slab .... which was also nice ..
the finished elm slab ... arrived in chicago yesterday ...
more slabs, ready to go ... get em while theyre hot ...4/29/11
i bought a nice claro walnut slab last year about this time and the client i bought it for changed her mind to english elm at the last minute ... its been gathering dust in the finish room for the last year and this week we decided it would be easier to sell if folks could see what it actually looks like ... duh ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
the photo above is from a post about a claro walnut slab table last summer. it shows me and my trustly (25 years), puny 3.5" makita power planer that we use as a first step to quickly remove the rough stuff and flatten it out ... just like a hand plane only louder and less tiring ...
the next step after the power planing is to scrape achoice the tracks . in the video clip here, you can see the progress will and trevor make on removing the power plane tracks in the 21 seconds of the clip. its why we dont much believe in belt sanders for table tops and panels. they probably spent about 5 minutes total, including short breaks, to completely prepare the slab for final sanding with our porter cable 505 sander. typically after scraping we start with 150 and finish with 180 ... i have written briefly about the two handled scraper in the past and i still think it is one of the essential tools a furniture maker should master ... with the grain, across the, against the grain ... if its sharp, it doesnt care ... it leaves a most pleasing hand smoothed, ripply surface similar to a fine antique ... try it !
you probably already have one of these gathering dust somewhere ... learn how to tune it up and get it working. youll be glad you did ... 
in this photo, trevor lays out cuts that could straighten the slab somewhat to show a potential client its mellower shape .. inside the tape it measures +/- 48 x 102.
first coat of finish yesterday .. open studio is coming, and for that, the slab will be hung on the wall using temporary french cleats as on the bed we finished recently ... as i mentioned in this previous post, it is hard for a client to visualize the finished look of a slab in the rough ... more photos later next week ...
long post ahead warning applies to this one ....
well, ok, we finished one up today. its been in the works for a while and involved a lot of precise hand and machine work, and considerable back and forth with our client on the design details ... we left the hard choices up to him and he was, in hindsight, on the money 100%.
its made from a wood we have not used before, fumed spessart quartersawn oak from talarico hardwoods (great wood story at that first link) in mohnton, pennsylvania ... my client selected the wood type for this bookcase from the website and i was only too happy to try it out ... it was beautifully sawn and dried, and a pleasure to work with ... we used a natural varnish finish and the brown black color and figure is extremely beautiful, yet at the same time, not easy to capture in a photograph ...
you can sort of see the mix of tones and figure if you click on this photo above and enlarge it... the saturns are an element i had used on an earlier piece for this client and one he alchoices liked .. one of the design quandries that was debated up to the final end was where do they go, and how many of them are there? we eventually figured it out by photographing a sample inlay, cutting out a bunch of the actual size pictures and double stickying them where we thought they might look good. the 
we started with a phases of the moon theme ...
the joinery was precise and fussy, yet masterfully accomplished by trevor on the cnc. housed shelf ends and through, very nicely clearanced tenons that had no play, yet hammered together relatively easily and with just enough room for glue.
close up .... we debated squaring up the mortises and tenons, but realized the handwork involved would probably actually take achoice from the precision of the fits and we decided to go with the 1/8th" radiused corners, right off the router. .. glad we did; we would still be chiseling and fitting...
the bordered star vs. the solid star ... the 10 piece border and green abalone center star won out. we actually did the front inlays on quarter inch thick strips so that the inside, outside, and face edge of the verticals all show quartered figure ... the wood is so straight grained, the joint there became virtually invisible.
trevor and will had a nice time laying in the green abalone lines from our new favorite supplier, andy depaule, at luthier supply. imho, 
trevor also worked his magic on the 9 piece multi level main pediment inlay above and below.
the moons are cut from the back side of gold abalone blanks ... not gold, but not really white either... moon color, actually ...
this photo shows the pasted on pictures described above ...
as we were finishing off the pediment, it occurred to us that we had an excellent place for a secret compartment ... its a dead simple mechanism. the ends of the supporting side cleats are beveled back for the last two inches so that when you push down near the outside of the case, the center pops up and you just lift off the top. as they say, i could tell you where the piece is going, but then id have to kill you ... pretty spacious in there ... and you can see the cleat bevel in the photo below ...
we debated leaving the tenons a bit proud, but in the end, flushed them off; another completely correct client decision in hindsight ...
this is the tahdah photo before the finishing started. we completely disassembled the case, completely finished all the shelves and interior of the case and backboards before glue up; to the outside of the verticals and the last 1/4" of the tenons with the inlays already on them, we applied one coat of finish so the inevitable glue squeeze out could be cleaned off, glued up the case, resanded the tenons perfectly flush, and final finished the outside of the case. good to go ... a challenging, design, nicely executed by the boys in the shop ...
