refreshing a george nakashima table

we delivered this 1959 george nakashima table to its new home yesterday .. it is a
beautiful octagonal room with floor to ceiling cherry paneling
it was a sunny day and the photography was difficult, but you get the idea.
see the finished top in the sunshine in the last photo in this post.

the table had been kerfed when it arrived here and we added a few more
to flatten the top which had curled over a 1/2" over its six foot width .
we also moved the short stiffeners out a couple of inches to get them closer
to the edge of the table .. it's pretty flat now if i do say so myself.

trevor and tyler attaching the base to the top on site ...
the laurel top is EXTREMELY heavy, and there is no
way it could have been delivered with the base in place.

on arrival, we discovered that the base could be completely

disassembled. we labeled all the intersections,cleaned the joints,

and reglued it with hot hide glue

trevor also reinforced the half lapped joints with long screws after the glue had set

you can see the curve of the top and the color that the top
was in its unfaded color

this is what the top looked like before trevor scraped it down
based on how yellow it was, we're guessing it was nitrocellulose
lacquer applied at some time in the past