About five years ago I purchased some Tatajuba slabs, air dried for eight years, thirteen years by now. I had in mind a Nakashima style desk and dining table. The slabs are about 3 1/2 thick 16-24" wide, and weigh about 300 pounds each. They were so unwieldy that two people could barely lift one. So I never dived in and did anything with them, they just took up floor space. I thought of ways to lighten them like drill big holes in the underside. But what if that causes them to warp? The other day I got the idea to find someone who could resaw them into book matched slabs each about 1 1/2" thick. Sounds impossible but finally I found a fellow out in the middle of nowhere who cuts native hardwood slabs. He has a horizontal bandsaw that is powered by a 4 cylinder Kabota diesel engine. Worked like a charm. Afterwards he showed me this huge pile of KD walnut slab pieces 3" thick which were cut offs and hunks of slab not big enough to sell as full slabs. It was a pile about 4 feet high. He asked if I would give him 100 bucks for it and get it out of his way. Being a turner as well as furniture guy I envisioned the turning blanks I could make. I whipped out my wallet and with his help loaded it onto my truck. I ended up with 36 turning blanks 6-20" diameter. As a bonus I milled enough lumber out of it to complete the cut list for the trestle I plan to build for the Tatajuba table. I'm going to build the modern trestle table in FWW#235.
Now here's where I need advise, never having gone the slab route before. As can be seen in the photos the slabs have a series of crescent shaped checks in them as well as a few minor longitudinal cracks. Since I have a can of bronze dust which in bygone days was used to bronze baby shoes (that's another long story), I was thinking of mixing some bronze dust with epoxy and filling the checks. Will this work or just create problems down the road? I know that butterfly keys are used for longitudinal cracks, but will these curvilinear transverse cracks require keys, or just epoxy. I plan to joint the inner edges of each slab and attach them in the middle with a double row of biscuits and then a series of butterflies on the surface. Is this reasonable? I will trim the ends off so that the table only measures about 76" long and 44" wide. That will lighten it up a tad as well and I think the husky trestle will support it.
I would greatly appreciate and suggestions.