Mesquite cafe table

[Charlie Fox]

November 2014 a friend posted on facebook about the demise of her mesquite tree due to our droughts a couple years ago- to which i promptly replied "whatchya gonna do with it"? - her - "just burn it like the last one" me - "um, can i have it"?

so a rented trailer, mill fee, and a year of drying time and she gets a 36" tall cafe table and the rest of the wood is mine - all mine! i had to get creative to avoid having to use 3 prime slabs to get the desired width, and as many of you know trying to get fancy with natural edge wood presents all sorts of dilemmas since you have no plumb or square edges to work off of. anyway, she is very happy with the final product. so much fun to deliver something like this and have it totally exceed their expectations. it was a bit more than i anticipated but still a fair trade for what i got out of it. like a lot of you i cant make anything simple, if i am to make a cafe table it is going to be the mother of all cafe tables. ;-)

black epoxy inlay to fill the gaps between the center and side pieces, then turquoise inlay for the natural cracks and knot crevices. legs are mortised 1" deep with angle braces for support, bottom framework notched with carriage bolts - head markings ground off and treated with acid for aging. finish is HVLP sprayed Minwax clear satin.


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[Charles Lent]

Great looking table !!! I'm sure they like it and will keep it forever.

Now, what are you going to make for yourself out of the rest of the wood?

Charley

[Charlie Fox]

well, i have already made some table top wine racks, but today whilst watching the Broncos/Patriots (what a great game) i started on some mirror frames. no pic of original slab,

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but i ripped each slab these are pics as they were but after after ripping and cleaning - - they are "log mates" but the book match sides had too many flaws to work with, so i have to use the other side. so i ripped each slab, the paired the outside and inside pieces of each to make the frames. they are 6-1/2 feet long, mirror will be 5.5 feet.


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[Jim Becker]

I really like how you folded that beautiful wood together on the top!

[Raymond Fries]

Very nice table.

[Mel Fulks]

Nice balance between rustic and modern. Real comfortable art.

[Yonak Hawkins]

The stretchers are especially interesting.

[Frederick Skelly]

Beautifully done Charlie!

[Marty Schlosser]

Charlie,

I like how you did your friend's table, but have a suggestion for such future pieces. Instead of inserting another piece of the mesquite between the two outside planks, how about using an entirely different material, or, if you want to stay with wood, a different species? The juxtaposition (man, I've been wanting to work that word into some text, if for no other reason than to give the false impression that I'm sophisticated!) thus created would certainly be exciting... at least to my eye.

Congrats on such a unique score. I can hardly wait to see what else you're going to be doing with that material!

[Charlie Fox]

Marty- Thanks! i like your idea and have actually considered it even on this project - but then i worried about the mixing of different woods and varying shrink/dry rates. all my wood is air-dried, which presents more chance of issues as opposed to if it were all kiln dried, and i do not want to kiln dry my walnut. as a result, most of what i make are designed so these issues are not a factor. do want to mix some black walnut with mesquite, but will be strategic in how i do so. thinking about mesquite shelf on the walnut mirror, and vice versa.....

[Charlie Fox]

one thing i learned from my farmhouse tables was by making the stretchers like this - using one carriage bolt per connection - allows the base to "self level" with the floor while loose, then i tighten them. if the floor is uneven, then the table top will have a slight wobble but the legs all meet the floor together - so i shim under the table top where it is not seen, as opposed to having to use a shim (or matchbook/sugar packet lol) under the leg where it is noticeable.

this was especially important for my first table that went into a 100-yr old farmhouse with very uneven flooring.

[Chris Padilla]

I love mesquite...such beautiful wood albeit painful to work with and not easy finding long, clear pieces. Fantastic piece, Charlie!

[Mel Fulks]

Really like it and have gone back to view it several times. I can see that using contrasting woods might be interesting ,but to me it's apeal now is it's naturalness and complete lack of affectation. I prefer the ungilded lily.

[kevin jennings]

20160217_163421.jpgCharlie, I started a similar project about a year ago. Got a large tree off our land, and milled it into slabs. Kiln dried it, planed, and now have 4 of the slabs joined into a 44" x 93" bartop. I did black walnut butterfly inlays and am very happy so far. I'm trying to decide what to do with the existing cracks in the wood. Did you fill the natural cracks with some sort of epoxy?

[Chris Hachet]

Some of the best work I have seen posted here in awhile. Thanks for putting this up on our site.