Burl slab table

[Todd Burch]

Tom, the idea of the table was to highlight the burls and the grain with minimal input for the rest of the piece

Mission accomplished. I looked at the top and never even considered looking further to the legs.

(Disclosure - I do not care for this piece... at all, but I am always admirable of people who stretch their skills and invest their time and talents into non-traditional designs. Kudos to you.)

Prashun,
... I'm curious how other would have made it. Rules are though that you any change the burl peices shape.

I think you left out some words here, like maybe "...that you cannot make any change to the burl pieces shape."

If that is the case, I would have turned to the lathe to make good use of the burl.

If you meant to say "...that you are only allowed to make any change to the burl..."

I probably would have cut it up into same sized square blocks, sliced off veneer pieces of each square, and made about 8 rectilinear tables out of it.

Todd

[Todd Burch]

I'll play, if that's okay. I would build a lattice from a strong wood - beech or maple or oak - about half the thickness of the burls. I would then trace the lattice on the bottom sides of the burls and route out the lattice lines so that it could be let in to to the burls. If the burl to burl seams on the top side did not satisfy me, I would have considered inlaying an abstract but naturalistic set of shapes and lines in contrasting wood - not just following the seams or even trying to cover all of them - just lots of curves and variety as if I were painting in the branches of a tree and the burls were the foilage.

This sounds very nice.

[Art Mann]

I looked up "cacophonus" and it seems to describe some of my posts.

[Prashun Patel]

What did the pieces look like originally? Do you have a picture of them or did they come to you in chunks wiith clean ripped edges?

[Yonak Hawkins]

I looked up "cacophonus" and ...

Art, whenever I hear that word I think of my mother who invariable used that term when talking about modern jazz or modern classical music. She would get all worked up and it didn't help that my brother, my dad and I would stir the pot by feigning defense of the offending music. It got to be a great family joke and tradition.

[Thomas love]

Legs don't look right to me , Prashton said it best for me. Take a look at these pieces a friend of mine did a few years back, he is quite the artist... maybe you can garner some ideas from his approach to burls.crawl.jpgLet-us-Prey.jpgLTF.jpg

[Mel Fulks]

One more comment having just read all. I like the take on the legs because of the context. They make the table seem like a primitive ,in the true "unschooled " definition . Makes it the work of someone wanting to honor the burl while feeling their attempt can not equal it. It states that natural beauty is innately recognized and style a human invention. On a table built on a high style concept ....the legs could be pretty ugly.

[Ben Hatcher]

Im confused by your treatment of the ends of the strips, especially the one on the end that terminates a few inches from the end of the burl. The square ends look harsh next to the organic forms near by. I think that blending them into the form of the burl or tapering them would look better. Better yet would be to eliminate them entirely and use splines or tennons for strength.

[curtis rosche]

What did the pieces look like originally? Do you have a picture of them or did they come to you in chunks wiith clean ripped edges?

The peices are literally the same shape as when they were harvested and slabbed from the burls when I processed them.
They only needed a few minor tweeks and a run on the jointer to fit together.

I really like all the different input I've gotten.
The reason the splines were between and not underneith was to contrast the joints and make any minor mistakes in jointery more hidden.
Please continue

[Prashun Patel]

Personally, I would not have combined the slabs on a single piece of furniture. The straight edges are at odds with the natural edges. Trying to make bandsaw curves to soften the straight edges and make them look more organic rarely works well - especially when the natural edge is quite jagged.

I would have made smaller - end table-sized forms. Sometimes when I want to preserve a natural edge, but work around asymmetries like a split or knot, I resaw the wood into two bookmatched halves. Joining along that straight line makes a lot of sense because you have balance on both sides.

I would have made the smallest ones into bowls.

All this just MY opinion. I'm not trained in any design, and certainly it wasn't my intention to make you feel badly about your piece; again it's wonderful for many reasons. So, take all this with a grain of salt. OWN YOUR ART!!!

[Lee Schierer]

Interesting.

[Tom Sontag]

I also think that maybe the table could work better with fewer burl slab pieces. And what about joining the burl slabs with the sticks turned 90 degrees - the stick joins each burl a its end grain - yielding a sort of lily pad look to the composition? Do all the slabs need to be at the same level or could you have a multi level display? Why can't you trim any burl piece?

I would be repeating myself, but I like the organic flow of the legs in Thomas Love's photos.