ESG - Maple Slab Tables

I Recently delivered a pair of bar height maple slab tables to East Side Games, in Vancouver.

These tables were made from bookmatched slabs milled on Sumas mountain.  The tree fell in a windstorm, 5 years ago now, and knocked down the powerline to my father-in-laws' shop, nearly starting a fire.  Luckily people were around to notice and shut off the power before it got out of control.

we milled up the logs, stacked them, and let them air dry over the last 4 years until the right project came along to use it.

This is a 3D model of the rough original design that I proposed for the tables.


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And here are the slabs I pulled from the saw mill drying racks.

These slabs were chosen because I really liked that they were sequential from the log. So they would really make a nice pair.  Also the big cracks posed an interesting challenge to fill and stabilize.

First pass of rough planing on the CNC machine to get some reference flatness.

Spalted Maple Canyon.

After Rough Planing the slabs down to a reference flat, I prepared the cracks to be filled with epoxy. 
I chose to use System 3's Mirror Coat for this one.

Here they are after a few more steps,  these have now been filled with epoxy, and Brazilian Ipe, or Ironwood was used for the bowties to stabilize the cracks.  I then used the CNC machine to again plane down the slabs to their matching, finished thickness.   After many hours of sanding to perfection they were ready for finishing.  I used the Minwax Helmsman, a spar urethane.  I chose this for it's durability and UV stability.

After many sprayed coats of urethane, and light sanding over the span of 4 days, they look perfect!

Next, the Legs were fabricated by another shop, I then had them wheelabrated.  I really like the textured finish that this brings to the raw steel.  They were then clear-coated and ready for assembly.

All finished and initial assembly complete,  now time to disassemble them and deliver them to their new home at East Side Games.

All done.   I'm really happy with how these turned out.

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