Flattening Table, thanks to Ron Swanson

 

We've been doing more work with slabs lately. We are super lucky to have access to local Hawaiian wood slabs, all sustainably sourced and milled by our good buddies at the local sawmills. Slabs, while amazingly beautiful with their live edge character, have their own issues. We could say that they have an Achilles' heel.

The Achilles' heel with Hawaiian hardwoods (like monkeypod) is that the same beauty created by the incredible grain also makes the slabs move around during the drying process. Even though the monkeypod slabs are sawed perfectly flat during milling and we take as many steps as possible to keep them flat during the drying process, the finished slab always doesn't come out flat. (In fact, it barely ever comes out flat.) So, we've got to take steps to flatten them. We figure that if we're going to put furniture out into the world, the surfaces might as well be flat. Fair enough, right? In comes the flattening jig, thanks to our good buddy (I wish...) Nick Offerman aka Ron Swanson, from Parks & Rec. The ultimate man's man. Hopefully, one day we will be friends. If any of you know Nick, please don't tell him about this post. But do send us his number and we'll start sending him random pictures of monkeypod slabs, which I'm sure he'll enjoy. 

 

 

So since we've been so excited about our flattening machine (aka arm muscles), we're going to make a little monkeypod table. It is going to be an incredible bookmatch using the off-cuts of the monkeypod from the floating shelf project. Did we mention that this monkeypod is from the historic living site in the Waimea Valley? It is some of the most beautiful monkeypod we've ever seen. Thank you to the fine gentleman who milled it and dried it in his kiln.  

Thank you so much for reading! We appreciate you so much. Keep your eyes out for some awesome new custom projects coming out! We love you all!

Oh and by the way, check out Louis CK's new special. And the two of Chapelle's. And Bill Burr's. All monster specials that keep us sane in the midst of all this sawdust!