working on a dining table and buffet for an aggie. the pieces are some of the most specific and unique ive had to work on. the aggie has a good vision of what they want, and its been a fun journey figuring it out.

the table is a simple large slab that will get squared up with a slight convex bow on each edge.

the buffet is the piece de resistance. its a waterfall cut from one slab that will have grain flowing up one side, across the top and down the other side.

the standout part of the buffet will be the doors. the customer wanted solid burl. I suggested if you are doing solid wood burl, we should look at texturing the doors to highlight the fact its solid wood.

this meant a lot of testing of different figured and textures. some by jig, some by hand. but we wanted the grain the flow across the doors from the burl.

ultimately we found a nice softened wave look that we will orient vertically. but the catch is we dont just want the grain to flow across the doors, we also want the texture pattern to flow across the doors.

this meant full test pieces to figure out texture and how to work it across the joints.

If my powerball ticket hits, I'll take it.

Difficult for everyone else is easy for you.

This is like Star Trek level above all of us.

You never cease to amaze me. Beautiful!

You are an artist that happens to be great at woodworking. Thank you for sharing.

Agrams, I would like to talk to you about making a similar dining table 108-120 in length. Please let me know if you are interested.

Nice!! Love seeing your work.

Folks, if you want to see what genius looks like, here it is.

Just an insane level of attention to detail and creativity here. As someone who has tried his hand at small wood working projects, the difficulty level is crazy here. You need to start a YouTube channel. That would be incredible to watch your process and throughout the project.

some updates on progress:

The burls warp a little when resawing them, and i wanted maximum thickness for the pattern, so i made some solid walnut plywood (each layer is 1/8" thick, with the hidden layer being oriented perpendicular to the visible layer). I then used this to glue up the burl with a slight reverse bend and used epoxy for the glue, that way it will resolve to near flat, and the epoxy is more resistant to creep:






I then taped an edge on them and flooded the face with epoxy to fill in as many voids as I could:



I then sanded the excess off and cut them to near net shape:


then started mounting them to the buffet and cutting them to fit as best I could:



all doors mounted:


then time to start profiling. the jig has two edge profiles I flip/shift/reorient to keep as random as possible. The opposite side with a higher wave frequency was giving too many steep angles i didn't like in the test doors, so i lowered their wave height by about 1".


a few passes:


i work my way left to right, then when I get to the edge of a mating door I mount the adjacent door next to it so i can start running the pattern between the doors:


the jig wasnt as still as I would have liked, and had a little sag, so i made shims I push under the jig so it is supported by the door below it:



I got about 75% through the doors this weekend, should be able to finish them up some evening this week:


I started light on the pattern. I can always go back and add more passes, but i want to edge up on the density /pattern i like.

-100% chance I could ever make anything like this.

Really nice.

agrams said:

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so i made some solid walnut plywood (each layer is 1/8" thick, with the hidden layer being oriented perpendicular to the visible layer).

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I'm not sure if that's something I'll ever be able to say.

I just realizes you bookmatched the burl doors also… dang

INCREDIBLE!

Wish and "Agrams-tailgate" was a thing. Just park a bunch of lawn chairs and a cooler of beer and watch him make cool stuff.

I used to do that with my g-father at his shop. Captivated me a little dude.

lots of sanding and shaping, but roughly done on the texturing: