The Garage, Metal and Beautiful Woodgrain - Part 2

July 19, 2024

So my last post about the S & O saga, in the beginning, was Fall of 2016. I think it was around winter 2016-2017 that we started buying up and searching out larger, thicker slabs to make coffee tables and end tables. And the rest is History!!

Nah! I'm just joking. The saga continues....

Nick is a welder so with him being able to make metal legs and brackets and simply knowing metal work, he took on the metal side and I basically took on the wood side. We both helped each other and he’s taught me some stuff about metal but not much. Mostly because I’m just not that open to it. I can stay out of it. I should stay out of it. I’m kind of terrified to weld just because I’m so accident prone. If you know me, you know. I’ve fallen out of our kitchen into the garage at at least three times. I’ve fallen into the house from the garage two or three times. I’ve fallen out of the house onto the patio a couple times. I just fall down a lot. I have fallen up the stairs and down the stairs. I fell up the stairs and broke my hand in two places a couple years ago… first time ever breaking anything. I’m very prone to accidents so welding or anything super hot scares me. I picked up a rocket hot burner from the stove once right after I turned it off. Who does that? (que eye roll and head shake from me) Nick did get me a plasma cutter and I did start learning how to use it, but that makes me super nervous and the big old gloves you have to wear makes it hard to be tedious and I just don’t really know if I wanna mess with that.

I digress.

So we continued just making what WE wanted to make, mostly coffee tables and then listing them to sell. I’d have to look at the page but I think it was March 2017 when I actually created a Facebook page for us. Originally the page was called Live Edge Grains Woodworking because that was all we did. We just focused on live edge and that was that. Over time, we did get the opportunity to make some fun stuff. We got to create a lot of custom made to order tables and shelves and even a massive headboard and we just really enjoyed it. This was back before I was diagnosed with MS. I had a lot more umph. I was much more capable. Nick had a different job. I had a different job too. I was still in landscaping so we both had time in the evenings together - and the energy. The house that we lived in at the time didn't have the ideal shop situation, so we had transformed the garage into a wood shop and welding shop. Nick even devised a welding table that he would actually pull up and down…. like a Murphy bed. It was on chains and he could winch it up and down so that it was out-of-the-way. That way we could pull the car out and use the entire space for for our wood and metal work. All the sanding was done outside and still to this day, I do majority of it outside just because it’s just so much dust and it’s just cleaner and easier and I don’t want all that mess in the shop. Nick doesn't either!

So that’s basically how we got going... In the garage, we did makeshift whatever we could to make it work and we made it work. You know and I know it wasn’t that long ago, but we were younger. A little little more spry and had more time and Nick didn’t work as much and he didn’t have near as much responsibility as he does now with his current job. I was still in landscaping as I mentioned before, but I would come home and I would sand and sand and I loved it. When a table or whatever I was working on was finished with sanding, we would haul it down to the basement. It always took both of us because they weren’t light!! I would spend my evening applying oil and buffing the tung oil finish and I just I enjoyed it. I put on some music and just hung out in the cool basement and buffed wood. It's always so awesome to see it, once I got to that point.... anybody who is a woodworker who really focuses on the natural grains and doesn't use stain as much knows how this feels. Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with stain, I just like bringing out natural beauty of the wood because I wanna find the fun stuff, the unique grains, the knots, the figure, the crotch woods, all of it. It's just so cool to get to a point to get to watch a huge chunk of walnut transform into this bright vibrant piece of natural art work. It's just so magical to watch those grains come to life and almost dance in front of me. I joined an identification group on Facebook and I had a piece of walnut that I had in question... I know it's walnut and I wasn't asking if it was, and some people argued with me, but seriously, I know it's walnut. I mean, I know the smell. I know the look. I know the feel. I know where it came from. But it was so bizarre that I just wanted to see if somebody could tell me more about it.... like is there a specific name to the grain, the figure, the grain pattern... and that's when I found a new word.

It was chatoyancy.

The definition of it is basically when the iridescence in the grain comes out. So if you look at a piece of wood, especially if you have like a nice chunk of crotch wood walnut or something super dense, after it's sanded down, you see the chatoyancy. When you have this really unique grain especially like fiddle back and different figures that really pop you will see this iridescence... it’s almost a glow. I don’t know if you any of you were or are grudge/hippie enough to remember back in the 90s when we had miracle beads for our hemp necklaces, but it's that look... that iridescence.... that depth... that shine that's almost like tiger eye. It's just so mystical and I don’t think a lot of people notice it in wood.... and it’s very hard to capture in pics or in on video. The photo above is one of the best I have gotten of it. You can really see it in the sunlight if you know how to look for it. It was this coming out in those grains that really made me fall in love with woodworking. Not to mention that every single piece was different and every single slab was something unique to uncover, every time I got a piece that was rough cut and just looked like chunk of crappy wood, there was something there. I couldn’t wait to see what was underneath the ugly. I still do it. I still go and I pick out the weirdest, warped, most ugliest, piece of wood that maybe some people see us absolutely useless.

And I can’t wait to uncover it.

And I can't wait to show you.

-AJ

PS- comment below and say hi if you read it.... or skimmed it... or just looked at pics. Just say HI!