Shopsmith Forums

Hey Fellas,

I just got some nice slabs in for various projects for furniture tables around my house.

I have a nice piece of curly maple, a fairly large slab of sycamore with some edge spalting with cool "snake skin" texture, and a spalted sycamore slab that is somewhat twisted.

Both the larger slab of sycamore and the curly maple are fairly flat with minimal twist/bowing.

That sycamore slab which is nicely spalted, however, is pretty twisted. I'd like to display the whole piece, but may have to cut off 2 feet or so to remove the twist. I could keep the twist and maybe level off the end of the top to give it kind of a cool end flair, just kind of accept its imperfection and work around it.

You can see the twist below on the spalted sycamore slab. The length is little over 8 feet.



The curly maple is a really cool piece as well!



Any thoughts on what to do with the twisted end would be great. Extra points for creative solutions!

Cheers,
John

Nice slabs. Unfortunately, I have no suggestions for you.

How about using the twisted end for a "waterfall" leg? That should let you make some adjustments to it.

I am thinking it's time to break out a hand plane.

A router sled might help to flatten it.
https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=J0SDvKHcL5M

BuckeyeDennis wrote:How about using the twisted end for a "waterfall" leg? That should let you make some adjustments to it.

IMG_0767.JPG

That's an interesting idea there Dennis. It might shave off too much length to achieve the height I want for the table. I was planning on using it for a behind the couch full length table.

I could drop the really twisted edge and create one face leg and then create a single peg leg on the other end maybe out of walnut which my be a cool contrast in grain and color.

Cheers,
John

Gene Howe wrote:A router sled might help to flatten it.
https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=J0SDvKHcL5M

Oh, it's simple enough to flatten with router sled, hand planes, etc, but I want to save shaving off almost 1.5-2 feet of board twist.

Cheers,
John

You could simply 'live with it'. That is consistent with it's character after all.

Nature is not all about straight/square/flat etc..

Regardless acclimatize it fully before doing anything.

Sazerac81 wrote:

BuckeyeDennis wrote:How about using the twisted end for a "waterfall" leg? That should let you make some adjustments to it.

IMG_0767.JPG

That's an interesting idea there Dennis. It might shave off too much length to achieve the height I want for the table. I was planning on using it for a behind the couch full length table.

I could drop the really twisted edge and create one face leg and then create a single peg leg on the other end maybe out of walnut which my be a cool contrast in grain and color.

Cheers,
John

This is an interesting pic that I saved to my cool-woodworking-projects file a while back. Not sure, but I probably saw it on LumberJocks. It doesn't have a waterfall leg, but the "peg leg" is through-mortised, and made of stone.

nice looking slabs , the` fun of it all is in your imagination.

With out loosing a lot of wood or ending up with a wedge shape board,,trying to flatten it might be a challenge,, I have`soaked them in water,,,wrapped them in plastic for 30 days or so and stacked heavy weights on the boards some where flat , it can still be tricky to get them flat , then they have to dry again,,

Have fun