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 ...
well, heres a fun project ... two large english elm slab tables with metal rebar bases for a restaurant in bethesda, maryland. weve been working with amy krol, a competent and responsive designer at aria group architects in oak park, illinois. her concept sketches are above and we have gone back and forth with her over the last two months, refining the construction and material selection details. were on the home stretch now and aside from a column location question (the column hasnt been built yet) were ready to wrap them up and ship them out. click the photos to enlarge them ...
we started at berkshire products in sheffield, massachusetts, a great source of amazing and unusual wood for woodworkers the world over. we picked these three slabs from their photos on the internet. the one above for the single long table ...
and this matchinig pair, which will be butted end to end and notched around the column as shown in the drawings below.
next came the model stage. i drew them in my cad program, but in the end, the random, this looks good placement was the choice to go ... some things you can overplan.
there was some concern that the skinny rebar (actually, its 5/8ths and not that skinny) would flex, as in theory, rebar gets its strength from the concrete surrounding it ...
sam said it would be no problem but just for fun, we loaded the unglued model and applied a little side pressure ... solid as a rock, even with 1.8th inch rubberwood dowels and no glue ...
we trimmed, smoothed and stiffened the single slab ...
cool top ... and started construction on the real bases in the metal shop.
sam came up with the great concept of temporary pipe and threaded rod through the corner holes where the table bases will be bolted to the floor and to the wood tops, which held the two 1/2 x 12 steel plates parallel, and, when the bolts were tightened, completely square. he tacked the rebars randomly and checked them out, then welded them securely ... very cool, but when we figured it out, the long base weighs +/- 450 pounds !! fortunately, we were prepared and actually constructed all the steel bases on dollies.
base #1, resting in the drivechoice ... this dolly was a touch under built...
the double table is wider at +/- 42" and we built those bases upside down, using 1/4 x 20" steel plates for the base tops to give the wider wood tops more support.
we bolted them to some timberstrand on the floor of the garage ...
and built a two piece mock column the appropriate size for the full effect.
view down the 17 footer
the column top is shown here moved off center to its approximate location. the final column location will be determined with cardboard templates by the job foreman on site and we will cut them to the templates before shipping ...
the single slab table ... 98" x +/- 30"
