I'm making a slab desk for a friend. The desk will be 60" long x 30" wide.
There's nothing sophisticated about this design, but it's going to be fun, so I thought I'd share my process.
I purchased these 120"x21" walnut slabs from Horizon Lumber. perhaps all mills do this, but Pete takes care to air dry some of these slabs for several years before putting them through the kiln for only a short time at the end (I suppose to kill anything living in it).
I'm trying to do much of this by hand. I cross cut the two slabs about 64" and started surfacing one. This air dried lumber really makes hand planing a breeze. I was able to level the cupped top in about 30 minutes. This slab planes like butter.
I'm intentionally leaving the splits in tact. It's a bookmatched set and I'm trying to figure out whether to match them (which I usually do) or whether to bookmatch and flip the orientation 180degrees, so the splits are at opposite ends. I The nice thing about this second option is that it will keep the grain of both pieces orientated in the same direction.
C&C welcome. Thx for watching.