When one finds them lucky enough to be engaged to someone who put up with them while they were 30 and sleeping on a mattress on the floor owning two plates, it’s wise to take that person’s advice, especially when it comes to decorating.
We moved into a wonderful apartment in Alameda which featured an open floorplan. With that open floor plan came a noticeable lack of seating surfaces. While we both have had the urge to make a live-edge slab table, I was worried it would clutter up the living room. Maureen didn’t think it would. Guess who was right? Not the guy who slept on the floor.
Maureen scouted this awesome American Sycamore slab at a place in Oakland called Ponderosa Millworks. We were both hesitant to purchase some massive brazilian slab which used to reside in an endangered rain forest which made Ponderosa Perfect- their main gig is as an arborist in the East Bay, turning a second profit by milling and selling the fallen trees as slabs. Wohoo!
Here’s the slab before and after going through their (awesome) planer:
Luckily it just fit in my car:
There were some cool knots and cracks in the wood which we filled with epoxy mixed with ground charcoal used to dye cement:
That was proceeded by scraping off loose bark and then sanding all surfaces at 80, 120, 220, 320 and 600 (yes….600) grit sandpaper. I was amazed at how the 600 was more polishing the wood than anything else.
After that was the oiling, which was AWESOME!
We finished the table with wax. After a bunch of research, we thought it would be a good match of waterproof-ness and durability. We applied the wax with the same buffer (different pads, duh) as the oil. Slap some custom metal legs on it and you’ve got yourself a table!
It's Curt! 