This client wanted to have a large live-edge table built for their dining room. They wanted to go with a lighter shade of wood and were also interested in using something local that might not be very common. Elm was the perfect solution. Elm is common to our area, is currently under attack by several diseases and has an incredible grain pattern that I love exposing. We started with some large Elm which was taken from Fire Station #2 in Raytown, Missouri. The pieces were very large so we began by cutting them to the rough dimensions of the table. We saved the leftover wood for use on a future project.
When working with rough lumber, many things can happen to the board as it dries. It often develops bends and twists that need to be corrected before construction can begin. These elms were no exception. As you can see in the pictures above, some of the boards have a serious curve to them. We also needed to split one board in half to achieve the live edge effect on both sides. We used chalk lines to take some of the curve out of the boards and to cut two straight live edges. This can take some planning to get it right, and then a quick pass through the bandsaw and we have our rough boards ready to be worked.
The boards were then face-joined on the jointer creating one flat surface, and then run through the planer to get them all to uniform thickness. After this process, you can really start to see the grain emerge. I couldn’t have been happier with how these boards developed.
The final step in making sure the boards were of uniform thickness, and to get a leg up on sanding, was to pass the boards through a wide-belt sander (tremendous help to have friends that own one). Once the boards had a flat face, they were passed through a jointer which gives the boards a perfectly flat edge that is perpendicular to its face. This flat edge ensures when the table is glued-up that the joints will align seamlessly. You can see the table really starting to take shape.
With all the boards ready to go, we started to prepare for joining the table top. We used a floating tenon system to help align the boards and add some extra strength to the very large table. There is an old adage in wood-working that says “one can never own too many clamps.” A little clean up with a hand-plane and the operation was a success.
Next in the process was to remove the bark from the live edge. This is normally done painstakingly with a hammer and chisel but much to my surprise, the entire edge came off very quickly in one piece and the other side took just a little bit of encouragement.
With the bark gone we needed to give the ends of the table a level edge. This is a multi-step process involving identifying the line you want, cutting it with a saw and then making sure the edge is perfectly smooth with a router.
With the table sized appropriately we filled the knots with epoxy, sanded for hours and began to apply the finish. Once the finish had dried, we followed up with a coat of polycrystaline wax and gave it a good buffing.
Now it was time to construct the legs. We started with large pieces of rectangular tubing and cut them to length using our metal band-saw. The legs are welded, ground smooth and the attachment plate was pre-drilled then welded to the legs. In this case the client wanted a bare metal look so we cleaned the raw metal with steel wool and some mineral spirits and applied several coats of sealer.
With the legs complete and the top finished the table was ready for the clients. Jen and I were very pleased with how this one turned out and we hope its new family has many years of happy memories with their new table.
