I had a repeat customer reach out to me about some custom furniture for a golf range he is on the board for and the are renovating. They needed some tables for holding golf ball bags at the driving range. I haven't done much outdoors work, so was a new option. For durability and distinction, we settled on Ipe wood, which is 2x as hard as hickory and dense as all get out (plus dulled several of my tools now currently at the sharpener getting taken care of).

The general concept:

Three total: two would be 6' long, one would be 4' long

lumber delivery day.. this was about 1900 pounds of wood..


I was on a tight deadline (opening is this weekend for the renovation) so I missed a lot of pictures, but first was to shape and cut the base:

And some over-compensated joinery:


I used glue on the joints, but reinforced with screws. I still worried about the strength, so I decided to pin the tenons with dowels for enhanced mechanical strength if the glue ever gave way:

Drill them through (while still remembering where the tenons were)


cut a lot of dowels..


Cut them to length and chamfer the edges (I want to leave them proud as an accent)

make a tool so I can hammer them without damaging them:


and done!


next were the brackets for the trays (jig time!)
Cut the angle:

put in jig to cut exact profile:



roundover the edges:


make more jigs to drill holes to proper depth (different holes were for different heights on the jig so I didn't have to keep changing the drill stop height)

drill the holes through:

chamfer the holes:


then do it another 39 times (4 spares in case)


get a logo carved from the wood at a local trophy shop with a CNC table then wax it (all end grain on this wood gets waxed to help it cure without cracking)


test fit:


and delivered and set up:



I missed a lot of details in there. the tops mount to the base by screws through the side of the brackets. The tops of the posts have about a 1/4" cheek cut out so that the pair of brackets on each piece slide over them and rest on the shoulder to self align for mounting...

Cockroaches and agrams furniture are going to survive the apocalypse

Beautiful as always. Love Ipe wood but have not worked with it - but have a project I'm thinking about. How does it compare to purple heart? Purple heart dulled so many high end blades, had a lot of pitch, and friction between blades and wood would cause burning if you pushed it even a tiny bit too much. Gluing was unique also - it's so dense just regular gluing broke and flaked off as none went into pores.

Awesome as always.
Do you still have your day job? I don't recall what you do when not in the shop.

It seems that your projects are are becoming plentiful enough to go fulltime woodworking. Are you keeping it as a "hobby" to keep it interesting and not burn out or have you thought about shifting over?

Not only does it look awesome, I loved the details of the process.

Great job, Agrams.
Worked with Ipe some years ago. Beautiful, hard wood with very fine grain. Made for tiny painful splinters.

RV, I didn't have issues with pitch, but it certainly dulled the blades (and router bits). Though I have done some purpleheart and didn't see much pitch issue with it either. This stuff is ~30% harder than purpleheart.

spider, yeah, still have a day job (O&G Engineering Manager). We are doing weeklong furloughs once a month pretty much all year, so a nice 25% pay cut. I am trying to kick up my side hobby to fill in that income gap, but I certainly can tell that it is starting to burn me out some. Woodworking is certainly starting to feel more like a job than a pleasurable past time. I have no intent of doing this full time. I still get to be picky and do fun projects. If I did it for a job I would end up chasing whatever work paid best and not be able to focus on the enjoyment of it.

Ag78, you know it. Those splinters are incredibly unforgiving. It is also terribly unforgiving for drilling and screwing. If you dont pre drill a hole, plan on breaking a screw or cracking a board.

What golf course is that for?

Dude. How are you still doing all that in your garage! Have you moved on from milling your own stock? I'm still buying big land parcels and knocking down trees. I think of you everyone time I see a big mesquites but then it goes into a commercial shredder.

I learned enough about Ipe from building my deck, railings, and some benches to be even more amazed at what you did here. Hard stuff to work with and unforgiving. It is almost like working with steel that you can't weld. Those little splinters usually showed up a few days later when they were good and infected.

Fido, you don't want to imagine how it looks.. my office is even worse as I am storing finished projects there until delivery.

As an inventory, this is what I have sitting my office:

-mesquite 'tile desk'
-2 live edge walnut tables
-two burl slab walnut tables
-2 standing desk walnut tabletops
-3 sets of table bases
-about 20 cutting boards and a handful of cigar trays

Agrams threads are my favorites

Which tool sharpener do you use? I used to send my knives off to one, who did a great job.

there is a local shop I use in fort worth. Longhorn Saw And Tool. they do my router bits too.

agrams said:

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Fido, you don't want to imagine how it looks.. my office is even worse as I am storing finished projects there until delivery.

As an inventory, this is what I have sitting my office:

-mesquite 'tile desk'
-2 live edge walnut tables
-two burl slab walnut tables
-2 standing desk walnut tabletops
-3 sets of table bases
-about 20 cutting boards and a handful of cigar trays

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Like to see photo of cigar tray. Not sure what it is but love cigars and interested.

nice work.

Incredible work.

here's one with finish on it. I have about 3-4 more pieces like this that i need to finish.

We built a deck for a restaurant out of Ipe and it was a pain!! I can't imagine building these!! Lots of dulled blades, had to pre drill for all screws, hammer in plugs to cover the recessed screws. It looked nice but wasn't something I was itching to work with again to say the least!

I've also had the pleasure of building an Ipe deck. (sarcasm) Hard, unforgiving wood that had to be pre-drilled full depth or SS self tapping screws just slightly oversized would torque off. But the most amazing part were the worm holes in a few pieces. Fully 1/8"+ in diameter, these clean holes wandered through the wood like they had been drilled with a crazy bent drill. I cannot imagine a soft bodied worm being able to eat this wood. But this is the wood to use on decks or outside furniture. Agrams your work is beautiful.

Ezra Brooks said:

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What golf course is that for?

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It looks like the Brook Hollow logo.

Big fan of ipe and great job as always. Hope you wore your respirator working with that stuff.

yup. I did an office suit of walnut waterfall desks and standing desktops for a company in Dallas, and the company owner was on the committee for the redevelopment of the golf course.