Wood is a beautiful natural material which is used to create everything from houses to beautiful pieces of furniture. Since it’s a natural material, it comes with its own pro’s & con’s and one of the biggest issues with solid wood furniture that can arise if building techniques are not done properly is cracking and warping from wood movement.
To understand wood, it will expand & contract like a sponge with the season change and moves the greatest to its grain width. For example, a 36″ wide table top will have a 1/2″ movement in its width, which can result in cracking/warping if proper furniture techniques are not performed.
Our method is no secret on how we construct our table tops, first we start with using kiln dried woods that have a 6%-8% moisture context and then we re size our boards into smaller widths 2-4″ to limit any future wood cupping. Once we have all of our top boards cut, we run them through the jointer to have a clean 90 degree edge before glueing all the pieces back together. Once our top is glued, it passes through our sanding machine with a 80 and 120 grit belt to take off any glue or unevenness that leaves us with a smooth flat table top. Then we handsand a 150 to 220 grit before staining a color of your choice and finishing it with a clear coat. Once the top is ready to attach to the base, we make small grooves on the inside skirting of the table and use a small metal clip approx 8″ apart from each other to hold the table top to the base but allow the table top to move without fixing it permanently to the base.
These methods of resizing the table top boards into smaller pieces and using metal clips to hold the top to the base without permanently attaching to the base will allow our table to stay beautiful for a long time.