In the handmade furniture world, there is really no such thing as a simple project. This dining table is pretty close to being a simple project, but as you’ll see… there are a lot of steps involved.

Claro walnut is a species of walnut that grows on the Pacific coast of the United States, and it’s known in the furniture world for its rich, varied color and beautiful grain patterns. The slabs are becoming more rare over time, and they are quite sought after for fine furniture.

Trimming excess length off of the slabs.

One slab, flattened.

The parallel marks you see here are from the flattening cutter. When slabs are dried, they don’t stay flat and true. The wood moves as it loses moisture, and as a result we have to flatten the slabs in order to join them together.

Rough sanded.

Before the slabs get glued together, both sides are roughly sanded to remove the machining marks.

Clamping.

The joint between these two slabs is over 11’ long. It is not easy to cut a perfectly straight cut over 11’, and it requires a lot of patience and practice. The goal is to have the seam between the slabs be invisible.

Shaping.

The client wanted a rounded end to both sides of the table. This profile was a little tricky, because it needed to be smooth but also blend in with the natural edge of the slabs. The designer, Krsta from Mused Interiors, and I worked together to draw the profile that we wanted.

Rough cut.

We removed the excess material to get closer to the final profile.

Creating a smooth curve.

One way to generate a smooth curve is to use a thin piece of wood, and bend it to the profile that we want. The wood will naturally bend into a gradual curve. We then trace that curve on to the slab.

Filling little pukas.

Puka is the Hawaiian word for hole. Slabs naturally have quite a lot of these little voids, whether they are from knots, cracks from drying or sometimes even nails.

To fix these pukas, we either use matching wooden patchwork or epoxy, depending on what the client wants. In this case, the client wanted epoxy. The patchwork gives a more carefully crafted aesthetic, whereas the epoxy will keep the slab looking more natural.

One of the most fun and intricate steps to slab work is taking care of the edge. Naturally, the edges of a slab have beautiful organic texture, so we want to preserve as much of that as possible. The easiest option here would be to sand the edge smooth and flat, but that would remove most of the natural texture. What we do instead is use chisels, wire brushes and nylon brushes to clean the bark from the edge, exposing the natural texture underneath.

One important part of designing a table is thinking about where the chairs go. I see this all of the time, tables in peoples homes or in design magazines that have leg placement which clearly will be awkward to sit around. So, when we have a table with an odd shape like this one, or odd seating requirements (in this case, four on a side), we mock up the chair spacing to make sure the seating design works.

Sanding, sanding sanding. Hours and hours of sanding.

Fast forward a little bit...

And the table is finished!

The figure and color on this Claro walnut is just incredible.

Crate time.

This table is getting shipped to the Big Island, which means that it has to sit on a barge to sail between Oahu and Kona. To ensure its safe journey, we make a pretty bulletproof crate. The crate is then wrapped in plastic to waterproof it.

Installed!

Finally, after many months of work, the table is in its new home.

There were lots of trades still busy working on the house when we installed the table.

Hopefully we’ll get professional pictures of the table someday.

Thank you for reading! If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate it. If you have any questions, or want to talk about furniture making and design, I am always happy to chat. Please email aloha@rustandroot.com or call/text me at 808-346-0366. Cheers, Danny

Building a Claro walnut slab dining table