Author: Alison

  • What is salvage wood and why do I use it?

    For the love of trees, I am not going to cut one down to make a table! Wood can be termed salvage for a variety of reasons: too short to make lumber; a tree that has to be removed because it has become diseased or unstable; re-using the wood from a deconstructed building; sometimes saving…

  • She’s got legs!

  • Salvage Walnut from the Columbia Gorge

    This was an exercise in epoxy joinery. The underside has channels routed from each square so when the resin filled the holes it locked in the slab. I felt it would be too busy to have the squares on both sides so for the other side I have three hidden angled openings that the resin…

  • Slow burn

    I have been working on this one for a while and came across these process photos. This accent table is being created from hundred year old timbers pulled out of a house demo here in Portland.

  • He wanted a river

    Mike contacted me through a friend from the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers to consult on his slab. He had been through a lot with this piece of maple: seven years at the bottom os a pond, milled and stored as a slab until “the fire”, hanging out in the back yard under a tarp for…

  • Half Cap

    I could see the end result in my head as soon as I spotted these pieces of wood! The walnut “stem”, has been sand blasted to reveal the pattern in the grain, I then ebonized it to enhance the contrast. The steel base is cork lined and has two posts that go well into the…

  • Because, somehow, they all look like animals to me!

    I have a friend in northern California who raises sheep… Can you see it? This fun chunk of brown elm is from Stevenson Washington and was salvaged from my favorite (secret) wood supplier. The legs have a painterly striping achieved by applying layers of wood dye on the inside to add interest and a bit…

  • The little buffalo table

    Oh, the making of the buffalo table, whose name came shortly after I decided to pivot the front legs like this. I loved this entire process! This table top was in danger of becoming a cutting board! I was milling some wood at the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers when someone said, “You are not going…

  • When I got home, I couldn’t sleep that night

    I had to purchase this beautiful hunk of fiddleback maple from Washington, just over the bridge. I don’t know why I left without it a few days earlier. I have enough wood, I told myself. Ha!(said no woodworker ever). This tree was salvaged from Skamania county and I already have dibs on another chunk. I…

  • The story of the river table

    A good friend of mine gave me a call one day and told me her sister was interested in having a water-feature table made for their beach house and asked if I was interested. Shortly after I said yes, this massive piece of live edge burl maple came dropping  into my life. Truth be told,…

  • The making of the Montero Entry table

    The making of the Montero Entry table

    I was checking my email before bed one evening and a post came through from The guild of Oregon Woodworkers about someone selling their collection of wood as they were moving to the east coast. I saw these pieces and had a hard time going back to sleep! It was too late to call and…

  • The Montero Entry Table

    Well this table went from the studio to the Gathering of the Guilds! This table was created with several pours of epoxy to infill the live edge crevice in this beautiful piece of spalted Maple.  The shelf has an accent of epoxy over Alder. This table was sold at the Gathering of the Guilds at…

  • Contemplating finishes

    This week I am exploring potential finishes for my first round of tables. I have been using Sansin stains, Miller low voc paint, and epoxy. My next experiment will be creating stains from fiber reactive pigments to apply to raw wood table tops. As for the five-panel doors, i am going to start with a…

  • Getting started on the five-panel doors!

    I have always adored the pure beauty, age and feel of the five-panel door. There was a time when these where being heartlessly yanked out of homes as modern hollow core doors took over. People thought the new ones were somehow better? Though they are getting harder and harder to come by, I am converting…