Wedding Guest Bench

In the words of my wonderful wife, we will chair-ish it forever.

Hire these people if you want photographs that look this good: http://www.tjuttke.com/

I wasn't joking: http://www.tjuttke.com/

Yup, still not joking: http://www.tjuttke.com/

This is a live edge sitka spruce slab bench that we used in lieu of a guestbook at our wedding. Construction details and more pics after the jump.

Sitka Spruce Slab

Sorry, not a great picture

Just a before shot of a live edge slab of sitka spruce, about 1 3/4" thick. I can't wait to get this thing into its finished form, for reasons that will become apparent in due time.

Sitka spruce is kind of uncommon in the Midwest. It's fairly common in the Pacific Northwest. The wood is light, 27 lbs/cubic foot (compared with 44 lbs/cubic foot for red oak). It's pretty soft too, with a Janka hardness of 510 lbf (compared with 1,220 lbf for red oak). That means its about 61% as heavy as red oak, and less than half has hard.

It, like pine, is described as being difficult to stain. The grain structure lends itself to blotchiness, apparently. Luckily, I have no intention of staining this piece.

Now the trick will be finding spruce in non-live-edge-slab-form...

Bookmatched Wood

One aromatic cedar slab - bookmatched

One term that gets thrown about in woodworking from time to time is "bookmatched." Something built from bookmatched lumber has a distinctive look to it because the grain pattern on the boards will match. It matches because a bookmatched set of lumber is a tree that has been sawn, but kept together.

A couple reasons to bookmatch lumber: It doubles your wood if you're working with a big piece, and it allows you to do interesting thing with grain patterns.

More info/pictures after the jump...

Cedar Slab

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." - Michelangelo

That is a slab of aromatic cedar. It's roughly seven feet long, roughly three inches thick. Its width ranges from 12-ish at its narrowest, and over 25 at its widest point.

I can't wait to get into working with this.