This was a fun little build, But I wasn’t initially sure. When the client approached me with this pine slab, I was reluctant to take on the job. Pine is not what I would call fine furniture, but the piece’s story had provenance. The client also gave me a fair amount of design leeway, allowing me to mix it with a beautiful pairing of wenge.
A few years ago, there was a devastating forest fire that ripped through the Black Forest; it burned a lot of homes in the area and left the landscaped scared. There are dead-standing trees throughout the area. This table was built from one of those dead trees slabbed up after the fire for a client who lives in the area. We have made several pieces from this tree. I built an entry table for this piece and used the live edge pine for the top and Wenge for the bottom.
It is a traditional Trestle table style, which I sized to fit the entryway of my client’s home. The main joinery holding the table together is a wedge driven through a tusk tenon.
The light-colored pine makes a beautiful contrast to the rich, dark reddish-brown of the wenge.
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The Build Process
Preparation of the Slab:
This live edge slab was salvaged from the Black Forest Fire, and the clients wanted to preserve the history of burned bark. So I used CA glue to soak the bark glueing it to the slab so it wouldn’t come off.
Setting Up the Router Sled:
I carve off any protruding branches or irregularities for a decorative effect.
I used shims to level the slab and a router sled to flatten one side. Once the slab was flattened on one side, it set flat against my torsion box assembly table so I could route the other side flat.
Routing Mortises:
I ganged the parts together so I could quickly and accurately lay out the location for the mortises.
I then set up the router sled with runners to ensure the mortises were centered. I routed a mortise, flipped it around, and re-routed.
Cleaning up Mortises
The router leaves rounded corners in the mortises, so I used a chisel to square them up.
Cleaning up the tenons
I used a dado blade in the table saw to cut the cheeks of the tenon, but to ensure an accurate fit, I cut the shoulders using a Japanese pull saw.
Wedged Tenon
I wanted a decorative wedge to hold a tusk tenon in place. Since there is no good way to cut a tapered-through mortise with a router, I simply chiseled the mortise by hand and followed the angled layout line I had created with a wedge.
Above is the completed wedged tusk tenon
