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The Continental Divide is a live edge waterfall style coffee table made of local book matched Black Locust with African Mahogany (Khaya, not local) bow ties and stretcher. Finished with lacquer.

This is my first attempt at a table of this style and my first attempt at bow ties. I started this project about 6 days ago and finished it last night. My fastest project to date, the more I do the faster and more confident I am getting in my skills. A couple of hiccups along the way but I dealt with them.

I did not make this for anyone in particular, I just had a vision of what I wanted to do with this wood and I did it. It feels good to be able to do whatever you want, no customers to tell me how they think it should be.

The table is about 18 1/2" high, approximately 24" wide and nearly 4' long. The bow ties are all at least 9/16" deep.




Here are a couple pre-finish pictures.




Another picture with finish.


Thanks for looking, all comments welcome!

Gallery

Comments

· Registered
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Wow, I really love the way the grain plays with your mind, as it almost looks like an entire log from the end! Very dramatic.

That said, have you thought about strengthening the the miter joint between the leg/top interface? Maybe splines or an inside corner support in addition to the rail? It just seems like miter joints are notorious for opening up as they age/dry. I have an old (~70yr) cedar chest doing just that on the vertical corners.

Again, I am really impressed at how this thing looks! Cool!
 

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Mike Ah, I forgot to mention that there are some dowels in the miter joints. They were drilled in perpendicular to the miters. A friend told me about how he uses slip tenons and I may try that on my next one. Dowels were a quick fairly simple solution. They also helped a lot with the glue up.

Thanks for the compliments!
 

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Wow that's awesome. Beautiful piece.
 

· In Loving Memory
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An absolutely beautiful table. I love that waterfall grain design and that locust is very nice. Those are some serious bowties! One question: how is the stretcher attached? I'm guessing hidden dowels.
 

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Very nice job on matching/aligning the grain. As Mike said, from the end it looks like it is just one massive chunk of timber.
 

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Thanks everybody, the grain match isn't perfect but it'll work.

gfadvm you are correct, dowels. I considered though tenons but I didn't want to break up the flow of the grain more than I already did with the bow ties. I don't know if I'll do that again with dowels. I think I'd just do a mortise and tenon.
 

· In Loving Memory
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Thanks Grant.
 

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Heading into my favorites. NICE WORK.
 

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Beautifull table and wood. Very nice work Grant.
 

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Grant,
Thanks for the update on the joinery. This piece just keeps me looking and looking… :cool:
 
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