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So, a few months ago, I built this table, made a video about it, and put it up for sale. And somehow this time, I got extremely lucky because within a day, I had two people reach out about buying it. And trust me, that is not
Watch a woodworker navigate a tricky client situation while crafting a custom Claro Walnut table with unique live edge features.
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Key Takeaways
- Building custom furniture involves balancing client relationships and material constraints.
- Clear communication and creative negotiation can resolve potential conflicts amicably.
- Natural wood features like live edges add unique character but require thoughtful design decisions.
- Using the right tools and preparation prevents damage during woodworking.
- Negotiating slab prices can save significant money when purchasing large wood pieces.
What the video covers
- The creator built a table and quickly received two purchase offers, creating a dilemma between two clients, Albert and Oleg.
- Oleg, a past client, wanted the table as it was made from the matching slab of his previous table.
- The creator offered Albert a deal to let Oleg buy the table in exchange for a custom-built better table with no deposit or obligation.
- Albert agreed, and the build process began focusing on slab layout, size, and wood species preferences.
- The slab had an hourglass shape with live edge features, nicknamed 'side boob' and 'crotch,' which influenced design decisions.
- The creator used a track saw and borrowed a larger one to cut the thick slab and stabilized cracks before flattening it.
- They discussed options for filling natural cracks and holes with epoxy or wood offcuts, ultimately choosing epoxy to maintain a natural look.
- A tip was shared about negotiating slab prices, with a 15% discount offered to viewers mentioning the creator's name.
- The creator shared insights on filming challenges, woodworking techniques, and client communication throughout the build.
- The video ends with the anticipation of delivering the finished table to Albert.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Client Dilemma
- 02:00Design Preferences and Slab Layout
- 03:58Cutting the Slab and Tool Tips
- 05:56Slab Preparation and Crack Stabilization
- 08:11Edge Design Decisions and Epoxy Filling
- 12:11Negotiating Slab Prices and Buying Tips
- 20:19Comparing Client Tastes and Build Process
- 25:33Final Build Steps and Client Delivery
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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normally how these things go. So, the first guy to reach out was Albert, and normally the table should be his, but the second guy was Oleg, a past client who's bought several pieces from me, including the most expensive table
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that I've ever sold. And for Oleg, this wasn't just another cool piece. The top was literally the other half of the slab from his first table, the missing piece of the tree. Now, as you can imagine, this put me in a bit of an awkward
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situation. So, I decided the best thing I could do was just [music] email Albert, lay the whole thing out, and see if I could perform a little light bribery.
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Basically, I said, "Look, you were first, and the table is yours if you want it, but if you'll let me sell this one to Oleg, I'll build you something even better. No deposit, no obligation.
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If you don't love it, you can walk away at any time." Then I hit send and immediately I start imagining his reply.
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You're a terrible businessman. You're not even that good of a woodworker and probably an even worse father.
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And then finally I'm in. What's next? Guess we're building Albert a table. Okay, so first things first. We need to pick a layout. And the slab that I bought's 101 in long and 42 in wide at the narrowest point, which is hardly
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longer and slightly narrower than the table we want. So, it doesn't really leave us with too many options.
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Basically, the slab has that classic hourglass figure, which is great for filling out a cocktail dress, but less good for making a table.
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So, when Albert had agreed to our deal, one of the first things that I asked him was, what specifically did he like about that other table? What made it the one.
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And two of the things that he mentioned were the size and the wood itself. So for size, the original was 84x44, but Albert's dining room is big enough to handle a little bit more. So we're going to aim for about 90 in long. Then for
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the wood, we're using the exact same species, Claro Walnut. But I think part of what he meant by the wood itself was the arrangement of the top. More one big chunk of wood rather than nesting pieces together or river table. And something
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else that came up was what I had jokingly referred to on the other table as the slab's sideb. And a more G-rated term might be exposed live edge. But either way, he felt that it, quote, sparks curiosity. So I took a few pictures and
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sent him Albert's way. And he and I both agreed that option A was best. Double side boob it is.
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At this point, I can start roughing out the general shape. And I'm making sure that I'm leaving it a little bit big for now. But after I finish cutting this first long straight edge that you see me working on here, I had another idea that
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I wanted to run past Albert. So, I texted him this picture and said, "We're already showing a little side boob. Do you also want to show just a hint of crotch?" And by the way, I'm not being vulgar here. On a tree, this actually is
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called the crotch. And he replied, "Ha." And I wasn't sure exactly what to do with that, so I just left what I could for now, and we'll figure that part out later.
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Anyway, to cut these edges, I'm using a track saw. And right now, the slab's about 2 and 1/2 in thick, but my track saw can only cut about 2 in max.
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So, here's what I like to do in this sort of situation where your track saw, or honestly really any tool, just [music] can't quite get the job done.
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All you have to do is borrow your buddy's track saw that's a little bigger. Okay, maybe that wasn't that great of a tip, but and I mean it is true.
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Sometimes you just got to know when to call in the larger tool. Now, I'm not saying that I'm a bad cameraman, but if or when you see a cool shot, I'm going to tell you right now, there's a
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95% chance it was dumb luck. And trust me, I would be happy to take credit for the good stuff. But that would mean that I also have to take the blame for the bad stuff, and I don't want to do that.
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Like here, this close-up shot. Look, you can see my reflection in the epoxy. Possibly one of the best shots I've ever gotten. Hand completely accidental just like the very next shot where I'm covering up most of the important part
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with the back of my hand. So, I don't know if I really need a cameraman so much as I need maybe just like a camera watcher. Somebody standing there whose only job is to say, "Hey, idiot, move your hand."
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Kind of like how Cam from Blacktail Studio has Scott. I mean, I know Scott does a lot more than that, but you get what I'm saying.
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Plus, I'm always jealous of those little moments where Cam has a problem and he talks to Scott off camera. Makes things feel a lot more real and really ramps up the drama.
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Um, I don't have a Scott, so I'll just talk to you guys. Scott. You guys can be Scott for the rest of the video. Anyway, so if you look at this slab, it's got lots of cracks, and most of them I'm not
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really worried about, but there are a few like this that I am a little worried about. So before I flatten the slab, I went through and tried my best to stabilize everything. That way the bit doesn't like catch and rip off a huge
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chunk of wood. Now if that did happen, it's probably still early enough that I'd have time to recover. So it's not like it'd be the end of the world, but what's the saying?
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An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Do you think people who use the metric system will get that saying?
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Good point. 28 grams of prevention is worth 454 grams of cure. That work? Anyway, in total, I removed about a quarter of an inch from each face here. So now the slab's a little bit over 2 in thick. And I'm
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happy to report that no big chunks got ripped off. In fact, really no issues at all other than the brief moment where I thought the CNC had caught on fire. But it turns out it was just a clog in the
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dust collector. So all good. Otherwise, smooth sailing. All right, so we're coming up on decision time for what we want to do with this slab. And to refresh your memory, Albert wants a one big chunk style top with a hint of side boob.
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So, as I was cleaning out the cracks and I got a good look at this, I thought it would probably be best to have a quick chat with Albert about it, 'cause it's starting to feel a little bit less like
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sideb. Insert your own joke here. Anyway, I sent Albert some pictures and we bounced a few ideas around. I could sand this back, make it more of a robust edge, and just leave it natural. We could fill in the negative space with
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epoxy or we could even fill it in with offcuts of the slab or maybe even a different species of wood.
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And where we landed was he wasn't super into having a giant hole on the edge of his table. So, for now, since I needed to fill in all the cracks with epoxy anyways, let's fill in these edges, too.
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See [music] how it looks. And then, if we want to pivot to another idea, we can. Basically, we're leaving ourselves with a few outs.
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All right, I've got a little tip here that could save you hundreds or possibly even thousands of dollars. And I know this won't apply to everyone, but still worth mentioning because I sadly didn't realize this for a very long time. But
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if you ever buy a big slab like this, the price is definitely negotiable. So remember earlier when I mentioned that I bought this one from GL Veneer? Well, at that same time, I actually also bought these two and these are some big boys.
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And I suppose this is especially true when you're buying three slabs that cost as much as a base model Toyota Corolla.
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But even if you're only buying one, you can still often get a discount if you just ask. Now, I know some people don't like to negotiate. So, I got Dan, the guy from GL Veneer, to agree that he
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would give 15% off to anybody who mentions Chris from Full Eyes. And I don't know this for a fact, but I bet you
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Then just stand there and I [clears throat] bet eventually they'll give you 15% off just to get rid of you.
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If you try it out, let me know how it goes. Okay, time to pour the epoxy. And epoxy doesn't really make that much of a sound when I pour it. So to make it more satisfying, I'm going to do some overly
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aggressive Foley work. Okay, while that's curing, let's get started on the base. So, you remember when I was making a deal with Albert? I asked him what made that original table the one. And he mentioned [music] the size, the wood
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itself, and that it was already made, but that he wasn't emotionally attached to the other table. So, instead of just making a copy, we decided we'd try out some other options just to see if there was something he'd like better. And
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since there were no initial ideas, I started by tossing out a couple of designs that I'd been sitting on just to get his reaction. And between the two, he preferred this one, but wasn't really feeling either. So, we kept talking and
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then Albert mentioned that part of what really appealed to him about some of my other tables is a more robust feeling.
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And that's when it dawned on me. Albert and Oleg kind of have the same taste in furniture. And probably the most visually robust table that I've ever built would be that first one that I made for Oleg.
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The problem is Oleg's first table was quite a bit bigger than what we're building here. And if you scale it down, I just think it looks a little too busy.
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And I suppose you could lose two of the legs like this. But I don't know. This isn't really working for me either.
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And then I had an idea. Oleg's original table was basically this sort of Cshape repeated six times. So, what if I just take that shape and place them angled at the corners [music] and then build some kind of brace piece to attach
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everything? So, I modeled it all up and sent it Albert's way and he liked it.
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Said it had a real X factor. His dad joke, not mine. Okay, let's talk about everybody's favorite topic.
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Money. How much for the table? That's always the big one. So, the price of that original table as a commissioned piece would have been $17,000.
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But remember when I said in the beginning that there was no customer for the table before I built it? Well, the technical term for that is building on spec. And whenever I build a piece on spec, I price it for about 25% less than
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it would be as a commission piece for a couple of reasons. first because building on specs always a little bit of a gamble where you could end up with a really expensive paper weight. Not to mention that pricing it a little lower
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is going to help it find a home a little faster. And second, the more important reason, when you build on spec, you eliminate a huge part of what makes custom furniture expensive, which is all of the time that happens outside of the
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actual build. There's no time spent designing and refining to meet your client's needs. There's no time spent getting input and approvals on all the little details. And that might not sound like much, but all that stuff adds up.
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For example, on this project, Albert and I have emailed back and forth well over 50 times. We've had phone and video calls. We've texted about stuff. And don't get me wrong, it's not like I hate that stuff. I've actually really enjoyed
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getting to know Albert and we became really friendly really quickly. He even sent me ice cream.
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It's true. Anyway, so when Albert reached out about that original table that he wanted, like I said, the price would have been $17,000 as a commission piece, but then after I did my spec build math, that would have put it at 12,750.
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So, when I asked Albert to let me sell the table to Oleg and I promised that I'd build him something else, I don't think it would really be very fair to then say, "Hey, by the way, it's going
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to be 6,000 more." So, the deal we made from the beginning was no deposit other than ice cream. And that I would honor the spec price of the original, plus he could walk away at any time with no repercussions.
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A deal's a deal. The top has had about a week to cure, which means we can take it out, get it cleaned up, and send Albert some pictures. That way, he can make a decision about what he wants to do with
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it. So, before epoxy, the slab was just a little bit over 2 in thick. And we're going to lose a little bit more as we get things cleaned up. Now, to a lot of you, this will sound crazy, but back
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when I bought it, it was actually about 3 and 1/2 in thick, but it's a rough, curved, gnarly 3 1/2 in. So, at GL Veneer, they have this crazy machine they call Pac-Man that will very aggressively thin the slab and get it
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cleaned up, but it won't flatten the slab. So, that took it down to about 2 and 1/2 in, which is where I got it delivered. Then we did all the stuff that you've seen so far. And now here we
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are getting it cleaned up, aiming for around 2 in thick. So basically, you buy a 101x 54x3 1/2 in thick slab hoping to end up with a 90x 44x2 in thick tabletop. In other words, only about 40% of the material that you buy actually
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ends up in the final piece. So, it'd be kind of like if you bought a Ford Excursion hoping to end up with a smart for two.
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All right, let's send Albert some pictures so we can figure out exactly what we're doing here. Now, these are all options that we had already talked about, but I wanted him to have some kind of visual to help him make a
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decision. So, I photoshopped these and let him stew things over. Hey, so I was getting things cleaned up and I noticed that I had a few bad joints with gaps in them and definitely can't leave them like that. So I was
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thinking about the best way to fix them. And the simplest solution that I could come up with was to just set the table saw so that I'm just like barely cutting into the vertical part of the leg, which
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in theory would leave all of these angles exactly as they are right now. And then I can just slap it all back together.
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Now, it didn't go exactly as I was expecting because towards the end, the off cuts would detach themselves and sort of twist before I could get a good clean face. But thankfully, I hadn't touched my miter saw since I made those
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cuts, which means it's still locked into the exact angle that I need. So, I can just make a few light cleanup cuts and we should be good to go.
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So, you're saying that your mistake was saved by the fact that you're too lazy to clean up after yourself?
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I prefer strategically disorganized. So, when I'm at my shop, I'm on what I like to call the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch plan because literally the only thing that doesn't take me 30 minutes round trip is pizza. But a
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couple weeks ago, I tried something new factor. And here are the top three reasons that I've been loving it so far.
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I kind of just said it, but convenience. They show up fresh and never frozen. Pop them in the fridge. Then it only takes about 2 minutes to cook. No prep, and basically no cleanup. Easy. Now, I'm no expert, but I'd say they've been a
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pretty big upgrade for me because every meal is made with real ingredients like lean proteins, healthy fats, whole grains, fruits, and veggies. Hey, does tomato sauce count as a vegetable?
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No. What about pepperoni? And finally, if it didn't taste good, I might start running with my old crew. But every week, Factor updates their menu with new options. And literally everything that I've tried so far has ranged from pretty
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good to great. So, those are my reasons, but if you feel like your lunch could use a better alternative, give them a try. Just go to factor75.com or click the link below and use code for FB50 to get 50% off your first Factor Box plus
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free breakfast for 1 year. Again, that's for FB5075.com. And they wanted me to say that three times. So again, again, for FB5075.com.
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By the way, that fast talking voice was me in the future. All right, Albert's had some time to stew things over and he has a decision.
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We had talked about a bunch of options and I mocked up this image to help him decide. And if I were building this on spec, I would go with leaving this area as is and only doing something here. I'd
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probably start with the man-made live edge and if I didn't like it, fill it in with some walnut that's a good match. I think that's the safest move. But Albert is bold. Remember, he likes something that quote sparks curiosity. And he
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picked the white oak option. So, we're going to go for it kind of. I think I'll show him some pictures of the man-made live edge after I cut it since I need to do that anyway before I permanently
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attach the white oak. Just so that we're 100% certain. That said, I can't actually do anything until this epoxy cures. So, we'll come back to that in a minute.
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At the moment, our legs are this kind of clunky C-shape, and we need to turn them into this elegant C-shape.
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So, when I make these first cuts, this is going to lock in the final height of the table. The legs will be 28 in plus the top at about 2 in, giving us a 30-in tall table, which is right where you
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want a dining table. The other day though, I got this comment where a guy told me that my tables always look like I built them too low.
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And you know what? I 100% agree. They do. And there's actually something funny that I've always noticed.
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If you ask somebody to hold their hand at the height that they think a dining table should be, they'll do something like this, which is right around 34 or 35 in. Seriously, go try it. Ask your wife or your boyfriend or mom or
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whoever, preferably in a room where there's no dining table to reference, but have them hold their hand at the height that they think a dining table should be, and then measure it.
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Now, I know that 4 or 5 in doesn't really sound like that much, but trust me, it's a lot. I'm 6'2, and if I sat at a 34-in high dining table in a normal chair, I'd feel like I was a little kid
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watching Legends of the Hidden Temple waiting for my mom to bring me out some Totino's pizza rolls. All that said, I totally agree with I'm guessing Charan ready. They do tend to look kind of low.
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Maybe it's I don't know like because you're just seeing them from a low angle or out of context. The fact that there's no chairs maybe. Honestly, I have no clue. But I do promise that this one will be a normal standard height just
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like all the rest, even if they refuse to look like it. We still need to cut off these tips, but for now we know what we need to in order to move forward, which is how wide and how thick these are. That way, we can
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make the spine pieces that are going to connect [music] everything together. So, when I was buying the lumber for this piece, I got some chunks that are about 4 in thick specifically for this [music] part. But, I didn't really like
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the way that the wood matched with the legs. So, instead of using it, I'm going to laminate a few thinner pieces together into an oversized chunk and then mill that down into the 3 in that I need.
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Then, when it comes to shaping these, it's really going to be the same process that [music] you just saw me do on the leg shapes, where I cut out an oversized chunk on the band saw [music] and then
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template route everything to the final shape. And the only kind of tricky thing that I want to point out here is it's hard to tell, but see how the edges get sort of rounded over while I'm shaping them. Well, because of that, if I were
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to leave them like this and try to join everything together, I'd end up with something like this. And then I'd have to sand everything back this far in order to get it cleaned up.
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But I think I have an easy solution for that that you'll see in just a minute.
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And also, I didn't notice this while I was working, but right now when I was watching the footage back, at first I thought this was an optical illusion, but it is definitely not. You can see my router bit moving up and down, which is
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honestly pretty scary. I would hate to have that come out while I was working.
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[music] So, yeah, glad I caught it in the editing process rather than the working process. Maybe time for me to look into fixing that.
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Next, we need to cut all of these joints so that we can assemble everything. But before I do that, I want to add a round over detail to the inside edges. But for now, while I'm doing that, I'm going to
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stop just before I get to that line that [music] I marked. And then I can continue shaping them after I get everything assembled.
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So, normally to cut joints like these, I like to make a sled setup on my table saw like you can see in this shot. But on this one, because the legs are so thick, if I were to do that, the blade
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wouldn't be able to reach. So, instead, I'm going to use my track saw, which also [music] can't reach, but that's okay. here. Basically, I know that there's no way I'm going to nail this perfectly, but what I'm going to do is
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use this first cut to establish the correct angle and length. And then after I've made that cut on all four legs, I can flip my setup around and cut off [music] the rest of the tip. But when I
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do that, I'm going to purposefully aim to leave it just a little bit proud of the first cut.
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That way then I can go back over to the router table and as long as I clamp on a little sacrificial block, I can trim everything flush, I'll get a nice clean face and I'll maintain those nice crisp
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edges. Now on the spine pieces, I actually can't do the same thing because there wouldn't be anywhere to clamp a sacrificial [music] block.
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But if I use my table saw without a sled, the blade can just barely get high enough to make [music] the cut. And I don't know how I forgot to film this. I mean, I thought I did, but I can't find
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the footage. So, I'm just going to reenact it here using my template piece. That way, you get the idea. [music] But basically, I just have to set the angle and then use a spacer piece like this. And that'll allow me to make the
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cut [music] and leave me with those nice crisp corners. So Albert's had a few days to sit with his white oak decision, and so far nothing's changed except that we're going to be leaving the sapwood intact, the good bad wood. So we're only cutting
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off the bad bad wood. And I'm the kind of guy who likes to give credit where credit is due. So this shot scoot, you really outdid yourself.
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So, just to be clear, what I'm doing here is trying my hardest to follow the natural flow of the grain. And I think I did a pretty good job. Really, what's making it look unnatural right now is just how the edge is a perfect 90°.
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Either way, though, next I'm going to use that edge to mark a guideline on the oak so that I can cut the mating edge on it. And I'm going to have two goals here. first to obviously end up with a
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good fit and second to cut it as close to this edge as possible. And that's because this chunk of wood costs about 200 bucks. So the closer I can get it to that edge, the more I'll have left over.
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And you know, I'd rather use like $60 of this chunk than all of it.
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So with the line looking like a good fit, I went ahead and finalized the shape. Then that way I could send Albert a couple of pictures just to make sure that he didn't have any change of heart because remember we still could go with
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that man-made live edge version. So I sent him some pictures of the live edge and explained that if we did that I would kind of grind it back and add some roughness and the kind of waning that you would expect with a real live edge.
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And then I also sent him some pictures of the white oak just clamped on at this point and he's sticking with the white oak.
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To assemble the base, I'm going to be using more dominoes. And just a real quick aside, after I filmed this, I got Craig's new competitor, and I made a video about it where I compare them and give my unfiltered opinion. And I know
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that only a very small handful of you would be interested in that. So, I'm just going to leave it there and tell you that if you're interested, there's a link in the description and you can go check it out.
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Now, the actual hard part about assembling this base wasn't the joinery. It was figuring out a good way to just clamp everything together. So, my first idea was to make these wedge pieces that would clamp to the legs and pull
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everything tight by clamping onto the opposite side. But when I was doing a dry assembly, I realized that it made the joint kind of want to open up here on the inside. And so, then I thought maybe I could add another clamp and pull
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everything back in. or that actually maybe the smarter idea here would be to do a much simpler kind of dumber solution. So instead I just cut out a bunch of blocks and glued some sandpaper onto them and then I could just sandwich
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a pair of those at each joint and use those as a place to attach clamps. And this worked way better. Pretty smart.
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What was less smart though was realizing after I'd already attached the first one that I still needed to cut the edge profile on the outside of the legs and that it is much much easier to do that before you attach the leg.
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And this is a great example of how in woodworking and I guess in life in general that sometimes the difference between an easy time and a hard time has nothing to do with like your skill level or really even what you're doing and
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instead entirely with just the order in which you're doing it. Like putting on pants is pretty easy, right? And picking up your kids from school is also pretty easy.
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But I would argue that order is very important there and it can really have a huge difference on the next 10 to 20 years of your life.
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Next, I need to trim the top to its final size. That way, I'll know where the center of it will be, and that way I know exactly where the base will go. And then that way, I'll be able to figure
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out where my attachment plates and potentially some C channel will go. You know, thinking back on how this whole project started, I feel like there's one big kind of obvious question that I never bothered to ask. So, I
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built the original piece on spec, right? And then we had that classic two guys, one table situation. And the whole reason that Oleg got it was because it came from the same slab as his other table.
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But if Oleg had just bought a massive dining table from me, why did he want to buy another massive dining table from me like two months later? And I thought about it for a little bit and I'll tell
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you, I have no clue. I mean, my first guess would be that he wanted it for another house, but I sent it to the same high-rise in Miami as I sent the first one, so that can't be it.
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I know he has a yacht, but I I don't think this would be a very yacht appropriate table for when the seas get rough, or I guess you could say for when the yacht rocks.
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Sorry. Anyway, I suppose I'll never truly know, but I guess when you get the opportunity to reunite an entire tree in your Miami high-rise, you just do it and figure out the details later. We can all relate to
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that. All right, I'm going to finish shaping the base here by continuing that round over. And by the time I've done that, the epoxy on the top should be cured enough that I can flip the whole thing over and install my C channel.
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Now, every couple weeks or so, I'll get asked by somebody who's building something if I think C channel is actually necessary for them. And my official public stance is no, it's probably not necessary. I mean, if you're building a table like this where
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it's just like a top and some legs that are slapped onto the corners, then yeah, I would 100% recommend C channel in that situation. But on a table like the one that I'm building here, the top's already dead flat and the base is only
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helping to reinforce that. So, it's kind of overkill if we're being honest. But here's how I look at it. Actually, this is a perfect example. I sell video plans and part of what you get with that is full access to me to ask questions.
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And literally this morning, somebody who's building the Vinnie dining table asked if since their table is shorter than our original, they could use only two stretchers instead of the three like we covered in the plans. And my honest
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answer is yeah, it would probably be fine. But I don't know. And I can't really say with any certainty for sure.
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And that I mean in the whole grand scheme of things, you're risking the unknown to save a very very small amount of wood. So I kind of feel like on this project adding C channel, even if I think it's unnecessary, is a good moment
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for me to take my own medicine. I mean, if this was for me, sure, I'd throw caution to the wind. But if I'm shipping this thing across the country once it's done, I'm going to go ahead and spend a
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few extra $100 on materials and a couple hours of my time as just a nice little extra insurance policy. By the way, if you want to check out my woodworking plans, I'll have a link in the description. I'm not a very braggy kind
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of guy, but I genuinely believe that they're the best out there. So, this table's going to be really strong. Like I bet you could set a,000 lbs on it like this and it would be fine. But if there is one weak point,
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it's where the legs attach to the spine. Not really a concern once the table is done. But while I'm sanding, I'm going to have to set it like this a lot. And I don't know, that's just a lot of stress
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on those joints. So I wanted to reinforce them. And that's what I'm doing here. Adding a big dovetail key at each of the eight joints. except that I realized after I'd cut in the first two that I'm accidentally cutting them here.
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Now, if there's any good news, it's that I can just fill these in with some epoxy and you're never going to see them. And if anything, they made an already too strong joint even stronger. So, I don't know. I guess note to Albert, if someday
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you want to take a sledgehammer to this table and you want to be sure that it breaks, aim for one of the two joints that I didn't reinforce.
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The bad news is that after 15 years of doing this, I'm realizing you can learn all kinds of little tricks, you can get better at problem solving, and basically you can learn to be a better woodworker, but you can't really learn to be less of
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just an idiot in general. Nobody makes a top 10 video for that. Okay, so remember back when I said that this slab was just barely big enough for the table that we're building? Well, I think that's only partially true.
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Realistically, I think this slab was better suited for a table closer to maybe about 80 by 36 if you want it to look like this. So, I guess technically the only way that it's big enough is if the eventual owner wants what Albert
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likes to call a curiosity sparking result. Now, obviously this entire project was a weird one right out of the gate, but generally speaking, even in the more straightforward situations, I think that I need to do a better job of
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explaining to clients the difference between I can make this slab work and this is the right slab for the job. Like for a 90x 44 table, I can make this slab work, but something like this is probably the right slab for the job. And
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the reality is that extra $2,300 can go towards buying the more expensive material to start with, or it can go towards all the extra time that it takes to make the smaller slab work. But it has to go somewhere. Now, I think in the
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past, I've eaten that extra cost on several occasions because I like the challenge. I think tables like this can look really good if they're well executed. And I've always kind of justified it by telling myself that the extra problem solving just makes for a
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better video. But I think going forward, I need to just stop pretending that the extra work is free because it isn't. So, I'm saying it here so that I can hold myself accountable.
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All right, we're on the home stretch. Now, whenever I'm sanding and finishing, I usually like to use that as an opportunity to plug my wood finish sample 73. But don't worry, I'm not going to do that this time because I'm
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going to tell you about the brass chunky mechanical pencil instead. I'll be fast. So, long story short, the feedback's been 99% positive. Really, the only negative thing was from a few people who dropped theirs right on the tip and it
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like closed up the hole and then the lead couldn't get through, which is one of the reasons that we started selling replacement tips. Now, that's fine for a short-term solution, but I wanted to do something better. So, I made a few
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updates, three of them. And the last one's probably going to be controversial. So, first, a more robust tip. Nothing you'd ever notice with the naked eye, but definitely beefier. Next, we made the internal shaft smaller. Now, this pencil was already really heavy,
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like you wouldn't want to write a term paper with it or anything, but I think that that heft is kind of what makes it feel cool in the first place. And now it's heavier, so it feels extra cool
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when you pick it up. And last, I got rid of the logo on the back cap. And I'm sure some people are going to disagree with that. They might like it, but to me, it just feels more premium without
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it. Or maybe I'm just self-loathing. Either way, I stand by the original philosophy of the Brass Junkie. Nobody needs one. It doesn't do anything better than any other cheap plastic pencil. But it's cool and it brings me a little bit
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of joy every time I pick it up. So even if nobody needs one, maybe you just want one All right, let's get this puppy all put together and see the results. Do me a quick favor, though. We've spent the
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past 37 minutes together, so I'm going to assume that [music] you're enjoying this video, and if you'd be kind enough to give it a like, I would really appreciate it. Either way, I thank you in advance.
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Now, I'm sure you don't need a reminder at this point, but just to recap, Albert was first, and he did me a favor by giving up that original table for the promise of something that he would like even more. And as you've seen, I've
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really tried to get Albert's input along the way so that I could make good on my end of the deal. [music] And technically, I did say if he wasn't happy, he could walk away at any time.
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So, I guess this is the moment of truth. After all the work, it's time to ask Albert.
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Was it worth giving up the other table? And he said, Absolutely. I love it even more.
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Thank God cuz I already ate the deposit. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
Topics:woodworkingcustom furnitureClaro Walnutlive edge tablewood slabfurniture buildclient negotiationwoodworking tipstable designFoureyes Furniture
