Myrtle Wood Tables
Clients, Tom and Carol, brought us some 4-inch thick Myrtle wood that had been in storage for the last 40 years. Tom’s father had owned a saw mill in the Pacific Northwest and had set this wood aside. Even with all this aging, the wood’s moisture level was at 14%. We had to arrange kiln drying to bring the moisture level down to 8% for the furniture to be in the home’s HVAC.
Designing the table and figuring out how to best use the “live edge” posed many challenging and exciting possibilities. Mark had intended to “average out” some of the rougher areas of the live edge so it could be sanded completely smooth, but Carol liked the dramatic look of the edge, so we used flexible flapper sanders to remove splintered wood while maintaining the effect of the ring debarker. We also had many hours of hand sanding. Tom jumped at the chance to work on the table to help transform the live edge from extremely rough to smooth and user-friendly.
At first, we chose a spectacular board for a possible trestle-style table base. But ultimately, artist John Christensen (www.christensen-oko.com) created a stainless steel base for the dining table and the exceptional board became a coffee table top for which John also created a metal base. In fact, in the course of the 9-month birthing process of these tables, there were many lively discussions and exchange of ideas between Mark as artisan, Tom as engineer/artist, Carol as designer and John as artist.
The tables are full of interest and character due to many cracks that were created by the wood’s shrinkage over time combined with the stunning figure around knots and the lustrous curl in the wood’s grain. After all these years in storage, the wood has new life as two very distinctive and unique tables in Tom and Carol’s showcase home.
