Unique nautical coffee table build

[Cameron Good]

Hello all,
I have recently joined the forum and thought I would share my current project and get some input on design.

Back story:
My father-in-law was a career navy man. About 20 years ago they were decommissioning a ship and he salvaged what he calls the "Captains landing". It sat in his basement for 20 years before he pulled it out a few weeks ago and gave it to me. For a Christmas surprise, my wife and I are converting it into a new coffee table for him. The landing is made from what appears to be white oak, and has lots of water-worn character from where the poly wore off and water seeped in. There are also lots of holes in the corners from what I can only imagine was attached railing, so those will need to be fitted with dowels. The dimensions are currently 37" X 23.75" X 1.75".

For design, I am thinking something with a Greene and Greene/Craftsman style. Anyways, more on that later. Here are some pictures!

This is before it was sanded down:
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Here it is after many rounds of sanding to bare wood. Note the deep (dark) water stains in the wood and the stain from nails:
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I am going to turn this into a checkerboard type design, so I have to fill in each hole individually. To do this, I had to back fill the large gaps with strips of birch.
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Now that the easy part is over, I have cut and planed strips of cherry to fit in the gaps. Now to cut them all! Of course, not every hole is the same so they all have to be individually cut and fit. I also have some 5" wide by 1.75" thick cherry to add as breadboard ends, but haven't exactly figured out how I am going to attach them yet. Here are the ends so you can see how they fit together. Not sure how another M&T joint would work with the current construction. Thoughts? Run multiple dowels through the two pieces to attach the end caps?
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I hope to work on it this weekend, so I'll post more progress pics as they are available.

[Cody Colston]

That's an interesting piece of woodwork with some great history behind it. Instead of filling the holes with cherry, I think I would put it on a base and cover the top with glass. That would allow the piece to remain as-is and still serve as a coffee table.

[Keith Starosta]

That's an interesting piece of woodwork with some great history behind it. Instead of filling the holes with cherry, I think I would put it on a base and cover the top with glass. That would allow the piece to remain as-is and still serve as a coffee table.

+1 on Cody's comment! This is originally how I thought you were going to do it. Regardless, it's a great project. Your FIL is going to be thrilled!

- Keith

[Mike Cozad]

+1. I built our coffee table out of a very old white oak lobster pot. I had a slab of glass cut to fit the top so that I wouldn't need to modify the uniqueness of the pot. Being a US Sailor myself, I can say I would appreciate the article much more without the cherry additions.....

[Kent A Bathurst]

What/where was this on the ship? Tried a quick search, but there are too many restaurants called captain's landing.

[Tom Scott]

More than likely "Captain's Landing" is a slang (and there is plenty of that in nautical terminology) for the quarterdeck.

[Cameron Good]

I wish I could leave it alone and put a glass top on it! The problem is that it is bowed up in the middle, so the glass would not sit flat. There is no way to sand/plane it to get it perfectly level because of all the nails involved. He loves playing checkers with the grand-kids, so maybe this will be a really big checkerboard for him!

I have looked and looked for exactly where on the ship this came from and can not find anything. I have searched high and low, but to no avail. I'm 99% sure that Tom is correct in his assumption. "Captain's Landing" must be slang.