Boys & Girls Club donation...

The cat's outta the bag!

A huge crowd showed up for the Boys & Girls Club Fundraiser at Timothy's restaurant last night. I was very pleased that my piece was put front and center of the auction items. I think it was well received, it went home with some lucky bidder!

It was enjoyable coming up with something out of the norm for the type of pieces that go through my shop.

The inspiration was these great pieces of black walnut that I have laying around. I just did a quick sand of the top with my Festool RO-150 leaving as much of the natural wain edge as possible. Worm holes and all!

Then I just went straight to a water based urethane finish. I think the piece would have looked even more stunning with an oil finish, but I didn't have time for oil to cure out properly before the auction.

It still looked stunning!

For the base I wanted a secondary wood that was nice and light colored to contrast with the richness of the black walnut. I considered using maple, but I had some cypress and thought the stronger grain would work well with the walnut.

I also wanted to do something with the sides to draw people to reach out and touch it. A hard thing considering how touchable the top is!

I milled a bunch of pieces of the cypress to different thicknesses and lengths. Then I re-glued them together. Staggering the bottom ends. Framed by a pair of slightly tapered legs.

A few cross members to tie the sides together and give a base for the top to be screwed to and were done.

I think next one will have a full shelf at the bottom for a nice plant, or something. And I'm thinking a nice small drawer under the top for all those little things that you want by the front door, but out of sight...

Time to go sand some more walnut...