December 8 2023

I made a coffee table for me and the boys. I moved into this apartment with them a little over a year ago, and it only took me that long to get a proper table for us. There's no sarcasm in that – a year isn't bad for a personal project that isn't pressing. Up until now we've been using a bench I made as a stand-in. It served us well. Now that bench is used for butts and not for books and bowls.

Started with a piece of walnut I’ve had for a few years, the end of a slab that was a drop, or a cut-off piece, from a previous project. I've always imagined I would use it for a coffee table, but you never know. The board was leaning against a wall thinking about what it wanted to be.

I didn't draw out any specs or have a design in mind. Instead I simply made moves as they felt right, a sort of woodworking jazz. Walnut sings as a material. It doesn't need any ornamentation. I prefer to integrate all of the checks and cracks as opposed to filling them with epoxy. One of the reason to either fill a crack or put an inlay in a crack is to prevent the board from cracking further over the years as the wood expands and contracts during seasonal changes. I'm ok with it cracking further, and I doubt that it will crack enough in my lifetime to lose structural integrity. It'll be fine.

After I made the cuts to the board the shape ended up looking like some kind of shield or amoeba. I knew I wanted to funk around with the base of the table – not too loud to where it drowns out the table top, and not too quiet to where it feels boring or nonexistent. There's no right or wrong move.

My neighbor across the alley was doing some home renovations and he removed some copper piping from his basement and asked if I could use it. This was, I don't know, last spring. Yes I will take all of your copper. Copper is a great material. Give it a hundred years outside and it will transition to a green color. Old urban church roofs were sometimes clad in copper, and because they get rained on they oxidize over time and turn green. It's amazing.

So I like copper. These legs won't turn green, but they have a great patina from being in a basement for probably 60 years. I didn't do anything to the legs except cut them to length and deburr the edges so they wouldn't catch on the rug. I made plugs from plywood and hammered them into the legs using only a friction fit. This will allow me to add furniture glides if I ever need to.

Before I made the holes for the legs I placed them in various orientations and numbers until I found a look and feel that resonated. Who know how all this works, or if it works. The freedom is part of the fun. I ended up using all 9 pieces. It doesn't feel too busy to me, but I did think during the process, "Well I'm not making the vacuuming process easy for myself." So it goes.

I used epoxy to set the legs into the bottom of the table top then touched up the lengths of the legs so that they are generally equal. Last move was to oil the top and let it cure. The process took me a day but also took me 6 years of doing this kind of work and acquiring tools and expanding my aesthetics, curiosities, and a sort of courage to be weird with it to be able to do it in a day. It feels freeing. Make a move, make another move, consider those moves, go backwards or forwards or sideways, turn it around, talk to it, send it to friends, tell it a story, listen, make more moves, see what happens.

That's one way to make a thing.