Planing Oak Slabs this week

Written By Robin Wade

planing oak slabs this weekAnother amazingly beautiful winter week we enjoyed here in North Alabama.

Storms were arriving while sleeping, and most mornings we were awaking to beautiful, clear, warm weather.

I don't know about global warming (although I do have some strong guesses), but Alabama has been enjoying a nice "warming" this winter.

Any slabs over 20" can't be planed inside with our helical planer.  So we take advantage of all this great winter "warming" to do some outdoor work when it's comfy. 

Looking inside a tree, one slice at a time, is my version of a ct scan.  We really have no clue as to the health of a tree (or body) until we take a look (or digital peak) inside.

This beautiful oak must have received tremendous stress of some kind.  These wondrous caverns are quite amazing.  Obvious to a lumber-mill, this log would be used for pulp at best.  I don't know what we'll do with it, but my first thought is it might be more suited for a museum.

Well, after a couple of years of air drying, it's back "home", has now been planed square (for the most part), and I look forward following it's path from here.

Planing Oak Slabs this week

Robin Wade
Robin Wade Furniture is a celebration of nature—a melding of a forward thinking commitment to the environment and a quiet, harmonious design aesthetic. From his "slow studio" in North Alabama, award-winning wood artist Robin Wade designs and crafts one-of-a-kind handmade furniture. Years before a piece is ready to enter a client's home or a gallery, the process begins—naturally—with the tree. Sustainably harvested, each specimen of hardwood is flitch sawn into natural-edge wood slabs, debarked by hand with a draw knife, and stacked to dry, usually for years, before the final cure in the kiln. From here, Wade and his team use both hand and power tools to bring Wade's vision to life, and then finish each piece with a hand-rubbed oil blend. Each organic furniture creation by Robin Wade Furniture balances the raw, natural beauty of environmentally, locally sourced hardwoods with minimally invasive, clean lines—a juxtaposition Wade calls both rustic and modern. “I haven’t yet found a better artist than nature,” he says.
robinwadefurniture.com
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