Curly American Beech Dining Table

This table, made of American Beech (Fagus grandifolia), is 12 feet long and about 40 inches wide. Beech trees are some of my favorite trees, and sometimes their wood develops wide, dramatic and wavy “curls”; they make for strikingly beautiful slabs when they are highly figured. It was a project not without challenges, as I sought to originally make it with traditional joinery without screws or nails - as a table that could be taken apart and transported easily. In the end, because the tops were so heavy it developed a slight back and forth rock to it, and the joinery was not sufficient to prevent this rocking. I focused more on ease of disassembly than sturdiness when creating the joints, and so the joinery was just a tad too loose. I could have easily fixed this earlier in the process by putting a cross-bracket lower down on the legs, but it was not practical at the end of the process. Therefore, I decided to add dowels and brackets to stabilize it. It’s still possible to disassemble it…it just has a few screws in it. It is also made in two parts/halves which makes for easier entry into doors, which makes for easier and lighter transport. It was a joy to create this table, and its fate as to whether I will keep it or let go of it is still unknown. I created a video (intended for and now on youtube) to show just how slow and tedious the process can be. The video, as long and (somewhat boring) as it is, still contained only a fraction of the total time it took to make this table. I wanted people to see just how much time it can take to make something the old-fashioned way.