Around October of 2020 I was contacted by a very nice couple who had seen a Youtube video of mine and wanted a table just like the one they saw in the video. With one caveat, the table could not have any red tones. This seemed straightforward enough. So I gave them a price of $13,500 for the completed table and base. Not including shipping. They were a little surprised by the price, as the title of the video they saw was “$10,000 Epoxy Table”. Being honest with them, the cost of wood and epoxy hadn’t really changed much (it had gone up some though), what had changed was the demand for these tables. Luckily for me, they were (relatively) ok with the higher price, so I invoiced them for 50% and got started looking for the wood.

Wood shopping

The ‘green’ slab we selected for this build.

These clients wanted a “Blacktail Signature Resin Table”. Which is just a pretentious way for me to describe the style I normally gravitate towards. A big single slab of walnut, lots of cracks and character, and black epoxy to fill in everything else. This type of slab normally isn’t too difficult to find around Oregon. But since they didn’t want any red hues, I figured I would play it safe and find the darkest, most chocolatey slab I could. After just a few weeks of looking, I found a beautiful slab that ticked all the boxes on Goby Walnut’s website. I showed them pictures of the green (fresh cut, not actually green) slab and they said it was perfect.

I always like to get my hands on the wood if at all possible before purchasing. So even though this slab needed another 6-10 months of drying, I had it brought out of storage to inspect. Goby even did me one better and brought five different slabs from the same tree, just in case we liked one more than the original. At this point in the drying process, there isn’t much to see as far as grain or color. The wood gets what is called ‘scale’ and is just a blackish-brown dirty looking log. What I am really looking for is the overall dimensions and severity of the cracks. We did a facetime walkthrough of all the different slabs, eventually choosing one.

Now that we had our slab picked out, we just needed the wood to dry and their house to get built before moving to the next steps.

The client’s house build

We stayed in contact off and on over the coming months. If they had an update for me or vice versa, we would exchange an email or a text. As we entered the summer of 2021 they started to see the finish line for their house. So we tentatively planned to have it delivered in time for them to have a family thanksgiving dinner on the new table. My wife is in the retail furniture world, so she even joined in on some Zoom calls to discuss fabric choices for their chairs. I had recently built us our own walnut dining table that was almost identical dimensions to this project. So my wife was able to help them based on her recent experience.

As we got closer to Thanksgiving, their permits got further away. Eventually, they had to give up on that deadline altogether. They kept giving new timelines for me to shoot for, each one getting further and further away. I didn’t particularly mind, I just told them to give me at least six weeks’ notice for the “for sure” delivery date. I also made it clear that the moment I was done with the table, it was getting shipped out. My tiny shop just can’t stock any inventory.

Finally, their permits came through and they had a real occupancy date in site. February first.

The unforseen problem

red walnut epoxy table black — The ‘reddest’ table ever that I built for the local clients

In the midst of this project getting pushed back I was continuing to make more tables for other clients. I even liked this one series of slabs so much that I purchased two more from the same tree for other builds. As I completed a similar Blacktail Signature table for a local client, I realized that these slabs looked a lot different after drying than they did fresh cut. Which isn’t a big surprise. Wood changes color dramatically as it dries, but this tree turned dramatically red. Like very red. My wife said the table I built for the local client was “The reddest table I have ever made”. So this leaves me with a very red slab that has been drying for a year specifically for these clients, who only asked me for a slab that wasn’t red.

I decided to come clean to the clients and explain our situation. We can either try and find a new slab that is dry and ready to work with, or try to stain/dye this one to a color they like better. They were actually very understanding and after some conversations, we decided to work on finding a stain or color to remove the red tones.

choosing a color

I am a big fan of Rubio Monocoat for my tables. I almost always use their 'pure’ (no color) wood finish. However, they make the coolest colors/stains of any manufacturer that I know of. In fact, I had turned these clients onto Rubio a few months earlier for their doors and baseboards. So they had experimented quite a bit with a variety of colors already. We discussed the look they were going for in detail, and eventually chose four different colors to try on samples. The nice part about the red table I had just built for the other local clients is that I had some offcuts that would match the new slab perfectly. So we could stain those offcuts and know exactly what the wood will look like. Opposed to if I were to stain a random piece of walnut, where the stain could react entirely differently.

I sent them all four colors, finished two different ways. For a total of eight samples. In addition to an epoxy serving board that I did a color test on to see how the stain would affect the black epoxy. Which I was glad I did, as I found one of the stains really lightened the epoxy.

After looking at the samples in their space, the verdict was unanimous. All three of us agreed on Rubio Monocoat ‘Charcoal’.

Building the table

I made a whole youtube video on the build process of this table that goes into greater detail than I ever could here. It was an exciting build though. Lots of ups and downs. Even decided to buy a full-sized forklift just so I could load this particular table directly onto a semi. Feel free to check that video out here.

I bought a forklift just for this project

Freight process

I always build a custom crate for my tables. I don’t trust anyone else to move my tables around without many layers of plywood, 2x4s, and OSB between them and my work. So I built the crate at no charge to the clients, even though material prices had skyrocketed. I had around $600 in materials and eight hours of shop time, just into the crate.

The process of finding a company that could ship this crate to their doorstep was surprisingly difficult. The crate was around 120” long, whereas a semi liftgate is only 96” wide. So if the receiving party doesn’t have a loading dock or a forklift with fork extensions, there is really no way to get it off the truck. The simple alternative to this is to have it shipped to a third party who has a loading dock and have them unpack it and deliver it. This is often referred to as ‘white glove’ or last-mile delivery. The problem as it was explained to me by my freight broker, was that every freight company is extremely busy, and just doesn’t need the work enough to take on something unusual like this. Especially with an item that is extremely valuable and not replaceable. Not to mention, the clients said that 70% of the deliveries had arrived damaged, and had “zero faith” that they could trust anyone to move such a table around safely.

Eventually, the clients were able to find a local moving company that came highly recommended by their contractor. So I coordinated freight to this moving company. They would handle the rest.

delivery

The crate arrived at the moving company with a large amount of damage to one side. They did not open and inspect for damage as they had been instructed, instead, they signed for it. So now the freight company is off the hook, and everything hinges on if the table held up inside the crate.

Due to the incredible crate construction by me, the table not only survived the trip but thrived. It was in immaculate shape and was delivered to the clients without issue.

what did the clients think of the table, color, etc?

This was the first table I was nervous about delivering in a long time. I make a quality product, and I keep the client in the loop, so normally there isn’t much left to chance. This one was obviously different though. Much to my delight, the clients loved the finished table. The color, the base, the size, all of it. I do believe that keeping them involved with the build process aided in this. If I just dropped a stained table on their porch, they wouldn’t quite have the same ownership that they did through this process. Which is good for me, because I love keeping the client in the loop!

I am trying to set up a time to get the couple to let me record a zoom call to recap the build and their thoughts. Let me know in the comments if this is something you’d like to see!

The 18 Month Epoxy Table