Intimidation
James Watriss
>So, I'm working on my own time up at school, building a Greene and Greene style desk. I went shopping the other day for wood, and as it happened, I was up there forst thing in the morning the day after they restocked the bins. They had some larger than normal Mahogany slabs, and since so many of em were so big, I just grabbed a couple that were about the same color, to use for the top.
As it turns out, they're clearly from the same tree. each plank is 16" wide, and if they're not bookmatched, these slices were very close to each other in that chunk of the tree when it got sawn up. The top of the desk is going to be 27 or 28 inches wide, and 5 feet long, so I'll have a gorgeous, bookmatched mahogany slab for a writing surface. (And just under 4 feet left of the slabs for another table surface.) The grain in the middle looks flatsawn, but the edges look about quartersawn, but ripply lines, like water, almost. It's amazing, and even after the slabs went through the planer, they still looked fantastic. At the moment they're stickered and clamped to a benchtop, but I'm excited.
No access to anything like a time saver sanding machine, so flattening this whole thing is going to be a hand plane job. Japanese planes or not, I must admit... I've never done really big surfaces before, so I'm a little intimidated.
Yeesh.
Stay tuned.