One of the best ways to add a unique touch to a piece is to lean into nature’s imperfections instead of trying to erase them. One of my favorite recent builds has to be a beautiful Oregon maple desk I made from a diseased slab. The tree had massive voids and had gone completely rotten and soft — which added stunning detail to the finished piece.
I was excited to receive a direct call from this particular client because he had been referred to me by both the designer who was helping him put his new house together and his brother, who I used to work with in an emergency department. Between his brother and his designer, he had two great references.
Here’s how we highlighted a diseased maple tree’s imperfections and turned it into a stunning, one-of-a-kind maple desk.
Choosing the Right Wood
The client’s new home had a lot of space to work with. This particular maple desk was for his new office, which had huge windows overlooking the yard. He wanted a river table for a desk, and once I presented him with the Oregon maple slabs I had in mind and explained how the finished piece would look with other examples I’ve made, he was in love.
The ants, bugs, and fungus made for some very unique pieces to work with, but because of they’re imperfections, the slabs required a lot of prep work to be usable. First, they needed several years of being air dried and sprayed with bug killer to stop destruction from invasive insects and kill any residual fungus. Then, they were ready to go into the kiln.
Because the tree was huge, the slabs have a lot of chatoyance and figure. We decided on straight black for the resin to contrast the maple. The color is absolutely incredible, and offsetting the wood with a black epoxy really made for a one-of-a-kind maple desk.
Navigating the Challenges of an Imperfect Slab
Because of the wood’s instability — it was so soft you could dent it with your finger — we had to use a special clear epoxy for the stabilization process. It took a lot of time to harden everything around the main voids.
Once those large areas were hard and ready, I was able to start pouring the main areas. I worked layer by layer, inserting a heavy metal mesh into the inside edges of the wood voids, then going back over with epoxy to hide everything. This assured that neither the wood nor the epoxy would shift or crack over time.
By far the hardest part of building this maple desk was the long process of stabilizing the “punky” soft areas on the top and bottom of the slab. I ended up having to use about three times the epoxy that had been initially estimated!
Revealing the One-of-a-Kind Maple Desk
Even though I sent the client photo updates throughout the process, he couldn’t believe the final piece. He was so excited to get the desk in place and had even brought in incredible art to compliment the desk in color and uniqueness.
The epoxy was flawless, and the wood had more figure than can even be translated in a photo. The client initially planned to sit on the side on which I’d created a straight edge using the epoxy but instead loved the live edge and wanted to be on the more natural side.
He loved the black metal X-style legs and couldn’t stop admiring the piece and talking about the figure he’d never seen before in a slab.
Do you have a one-of-a-kind piece in mind for your home? Contact me today to discuss the project you’ve been dreaming of.
