A place to gather

In the early days of courting my wife, I spent time getting to know different members of her family. Luckily for me, I had already known my wife for years so both of her siblings were already my friends. When it came to meeting extended family, I was a bit intimidated. I had heard many stories about all of the characters in her extended family like her gracious aunts to her sociable cousins. However, the name that kept coming up was cousin Nikki. The rowdy, resolute woman that was keen to learn woodworking. My occupation is Education, and my hobby is woodworking and furniture design; so, naturally the collaboration began!

Before Nikki and her husband Chris even knew me, they had already bought a maple slab from an online auction house that they had planned to flatten and turn into a singular table top. Unfortunately for them, the slab was still full of moisture (20%!) and had cupped and bowed more than 2” from edge to edge disqualifying it as a candidate for use. We had to switch gears.

After a visit to my favorite saw mill, we picked out two beautiful, book matched pieces of Walnut. Nikki and Chris’ original vision was a table with a dark finish, so switching to a dark toned wood was a no brainer.

Walnut slabs before flattening

While we focused on flattening the slabs, we began talking about the overall design. After all, we were now using two slabs to make a table top instead of one. They needed to be joined together somehow. We arrived at insetting a darker wood in a stitch like pattern. After crunching some numbers and sourcing the exotic wood, we decided on our final design.

Rough sketches to help decide on slab orientation.

The final design drawings before beginning to chop and inset the “stitches” as well as order the metal base of their choice

Now came the fun part. Over the course of two weeks, Nikki and Chris learned basic chisel technique as well as how to remove waste with a router. After practicing these techniques on nine separate pieces, I can say without a doubt their skills improved.

Mid Process photos of the long arduous task of insetting each piece of Ipe.

Here we see Nikki getting comfortable with the router

With it all said and done, I am proud of the collaboration. It allowed me to focus more on design and technique while educating my now great friends on something I feel passionately about. Every time we visit and gather around the table I am reminded of Nikki and Chris’ humility and willingness to try something they have never done before. Let alone, to take a chance on their cousins new boyfriend and welcome them into the family with open arms.