Another really fun commission! So happy that this one made it safely to its home in a beautiful nursery in North Carolina.

The table and stool are both made out of Ash wood. After coming up with the deco style design for the inlay, I created an SVG and cut it out with the Shaper Origin. On a test piece, I tried out 12 different combinations of pigment and dye to try to find the muted dusty pink we were looking for. Then I did the full epoxy pour on the table top and stool. Even though I’ve done 4 or 5 of these now, it continues to be a vexing process and in order to compensate for struggling to keep everything flat and level, I ended up pouring a bunch of extra epoxy.

While that was drying, I got to work on the legs. The design called for tapered cylinder legs, which of course I had never done before. I don’t own a lathe but I had seen a video of a guy cutting these on the table saw so that was my plan. I built by the most intricate jig of my career and after a couple test pieces and corrections, it worked really well. For the leg assembly, I cut angled half laps in two boards so that they could cross each other under the table. I attached two legs to each crossbar so that everything could be flat-packed for shipping, and added desktop fasteners to and threaded inserts so that the table could be easily assembled with just a screwdriver.

Once the epoxy on the table was cured, I used my newly-created homemade router sled to flatten the top and remove all the excess epoxy. I was very scared of this step but it went well. The torque of the epoxy had actually created a bit of a cupping effect in the table top, so I had to screw it down to my router sled surface to get it flat. Once the excess was shaved off (to my hope and great surprise), it sat flat on its own.

Finally I sanded everything and finished it with Rubio Monocoat in White to keep the nice light wood tone and highlight the grain. For fun I also made a little personalized garden-themed puzzle with some scraps. I hope Hartley likes it! Let me know what you think!