Jen and I were approached by a client that wanted to upgrade some of the furniture in their home to reflect their unique personal style but also stand up to daily use supporting their active hobbies.
The three of us sat down and roughed out the art of the possible and then went through a discussion of what types of wood matched with their vision as well as how to incorporate some other design elements into the pieces. The final plan included an upgrade to their TV Console combining black locust, walnut and steel. A unique walnut live-edge side table with a “waterfall” grain effect that will look great and house the client’s camera gear. And lastly, a durable, yet stylish stool made from BauBuche.
Construction on all of these pieces will be going on simultaneously so bear with us as the following story will have several winding paths, but in the end we’ll get there (we hope).
We’ll start first with the BauBuche stool. BauBuche is made from thin strips of beech wood laminated together in a vertical orientation providing a very interesting visual effect. The first step was to cut the wood to rough dimensions and then ensure the boards were of uniform thickness with edges that were straight and perpendicular to the surface. Once finished with this step, we were able to glue up the boards and begin to patch any surface irregularities with filler.
While the filler on the other side of the stool was drying we dug into the top of the TV Console. The client fell in love with the color and character of Black Locust, so we decided to make the top of he TV stand a live-edge top featuring locust. These particular pieces of locust came from Lawrence, Kansas and were some of the first (and last) boards I milled with my own chainsaw mill. This method was quickly replaced by my friend Tom the Sawyers Timber King band-saw mill (much easier on the back). The wood was cut to length and then the bark edges that would not be in the final product were trimmed using a chalk-line and a band-saw.
The pieces were then brought to uniform thickness and a flat edge was achieved by the use of a jointer. The next stop was to join the two pieces together and we did this using floating tenons (and bunch of glue).
Once the glue had set, we released the clamps and filled the knots and cracks with epoxy. Twenty-four hours later with the epoxy fully cured, we sanded the surface flat and trimmed the edges using our newly constructed cross-cut miter sled. The TV console live-edge top is complete and we set it aside until we are ready to finish sand everything.
Now back to the BauBuche stool… with the wood filler dried and sanded, we turned our miter sled 180 degrees to cut the 45 degree miters needed to create the waterfall effect. First you lock the piece down in the miter sled and cut the first 45 degree cut. Then you flip the piece around and make another 45 degree cut
With the three pieces cut, we used floating tenons to align and strengthen the joints. A little glue, some time clamped-up and you can see the end result was well worth the wait. The grain appears to flow seamlessly over the top and down the side of the piece.
Some quick cuts with our metal band-saw and some time on the welding table and we have the legs for the TV console, complete with the hidden cross-bar that will add to the illusion of the shelf floating in the air. Note the fully constructed BauBuche stool behind the legs and the top to the TV console to the right.
It’s finally time to start the live-edge waterfall table. The table itself is fairly large for a side table ( 28h x 28w x 18d ) and the client was very interested in the interplay of light and dark in heart vs sap wood so we decided to join two pieces vs just using a single piece of walnut. We started by removing one of the live edges from our first piece and then making it flat. We then found a second piece to compliment the first and joined them together.
The result was better than we hoped and it is hard to tell where the boards actually meet. We then had to remove the bark from the leading edge and begin the pain-staking process of making our miter cuts. Once that was complete we used glue and floating tenons once again to ensure the joints were stable.
The next step was to add a shelf that the client requested. The walnut was processed, joined, trimmed and installed.
With rough construction completed on the stool and side table, it was time to focus on completing the TV console. The top and metal legs are ready to go, so all that is left is to built a floating box. We started with two pieces of rough-sawn walnut that came from a house in downtown KC overlooking the Missouri river.
So with the pieces attached together it was time to form the floating box by a series of 45 degree miter cuts. For the sides we cut both at once to ensure they were exactly the same height. The pieces were then joined with floating tenons and glued together. After 18 hours of drying the clamps were removed and we performed a test fit with all the components before sanding and finishing.
What came next was lots and lots of sanding going from 80 grit stepping up to 150 grit (by far my least favorite part of most projects). The work is worth the effort because it is followed by my favorite part of most projects… the first coat of finish. This is when you can see all the grain patterns that we selected and developed come springing to life.
A note on custom furniture… Some people chose bespoke furniture because they want something unique or have a space that doesn’t work with commercially available furniture. Others chose custom because they want to support local artisans or leverage locally foraged wood. Whatever the reason, one of the side benefits for us is that we get to know our clients and what they like which is why this next part is so cool. When we were selecting wood from our stockpile we found two pieces that had something very unique… actual walnuts in the walnut wood. This happens once in a blue-moon when a walnut falls and the tree grows around the walnut. We knew our client would totally love this quirky feature and to our amazement, we actually found two. The first is in the picture above (the black dot surrounded by sapwood). The second is shown below and is in the side of the live-edge side table.
Here they are in their new home.
