another claro walnut slab table

up next, another claro walnut slab table.  this one will be about 52" wide by 102" long after i make the final cuts tomorrow. the base will be welded steel, similar to the one on the desk we made in july  and the dining table we sent to aspen in august.  click the photos to enlarge them.

sam is ready to weld the base pieces tomorrow, and the jig is ready to go too.

the process of moving these tables from the rough slab to the final dimensions is one that we approach very slowly, a bit at a time.  once you cut something off, there's no sticking it back on again.  and, a lot of the time, we disagree amongst ourselves what is the 'best' cut to make.  we try to involve the client as much as possible, but it's often hard to portray in photos what exactly it is that we see in front of us. 

 in this case, we started by trimming off the 'legs', and obvious choice.  we did leave a little bit of the crotch showing on the face side, and we may go back and trim that a bit more before we finish.

 we then cut some of the cracked portion off the far end as the table wants to be around 102" long when we finish it.

we then did some rough planing and splashed a little alcohol on it to check the figure .. looks good.

we then made a 2x4 mockup of the base and checked the proportions ... now, as you can see from the top photo in this post, we've moved the slab down to the shop now that the pool table and the oak table are gone.  it'll move right along now ... updates as we go ..