Back when we were living in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, one winter there was a horrifically bad wind/rainstorm. Even from the house, we could hear loud crashes from down on our 10 acre plot of mixed oak, madrone, and 2nd-growth redwoods.
It was often my habit to go hiking in those woods and I'd even improved some game trails into decent walking trails. Down at the lower edge of our property, I found what had happened during that storm: A large stand of mature second-growth redwoods had been undermined by water and the wind took them down, one after the other. A giant's pile of pick-up sticks.
We had those downed trees turned into serviceable lumber, decent redwood being not that easy to get. Sold off a lot of it. However, in my scouting, I found something else on our land.
An old-growth log, no doubt from a tree that had gone down at least 20 or 30 years before we bought the place. It looked like it had been hit by lightning, and then fell over. Much of the trunk was rotten and unusable after that long just laying there in the woods. But some of it was still good — and if second growth redwood is expensive these days, old growth is astronomically priced. We had some milled into planks, and some into raw slabs, intending eventually to use them for furniture.
Life intervened, we ended up selling the house and land, and couldn't take all of that lumber with us. But we took a lot of the best, and picked four of the best slabs we could find among the dozen or so we had cut, and stuck them into storage along with rest of our belongings, as we then spent three years in India.
Coming back home, we hauled those heavy slabs from rental house to rental house, and this summer, Stephanie finally goaded me into doing what I'd said I wanted to do all along: Turn one of those slabs into a desk for myself. She'd already built me the simple but very functional fir trestle-style base, but until this past week, all I had on it was this horrible Ikea plastic-laminated table-top. It was sturdy and functional, but the years hadn't been kind and chips were starting to come off it.
Months ago, Stephanie discovered how to build us a slab-leveling device, using boxes and sliders and our router with a special bit. After that, it was in my hands as I figured out how to properly sand this unusual old-growth redwood, now trimmed and shaped. The first thing I had to do was patch the various flaws and insect holes any piece of wood will have. Then came the sanding, first with a belt sander, then an orbital, and finally with wooden block. In places, this type of redwood is soft, but on the grain it's hard, so my initial efforts were very uneven. Eventually I got it mostly sorted out.
Then came experiments with various mixtures of Tung oil, boiled linseed, mineral spirits (for thinning and control), and oil-based polyurethane. The oils were to help bring out the grain color and texture, and to give the wood a small degree of sealing and protection. The poly, however, was necessary to turn it into a durable but attractive desk that wouldn't scratch or gouge easily. In one memorable mistake, I completely screwed up the finish and had to sand it all off to try again. On the plus side, I was able to get the top side to be more evenly flat.
I applied the finish with foam brushes, and the project being what it is, there are visible imperfections. On the other hand, it still looks pretty darned good for my first effort in furniture finishing, and I think the initial Tung/linseed oil treatments did a fantastic job of bringing out the grain highlights, including visible flame-patterns. The most amazing part to me, as I sit here and look at it, is it's a single piece of wood. No laminate, no separate pieces glued together as is common in furniture-making. One giant desktop slab.
Maybe someday I'll take another stab at refinishing it, but that'll only be if/when we get a proper compressor-driven spray system set up at our next place. So — here's a couple pictures. The desk itself is about 72" long and 33" wide, although only the side and front are rectangular; the back is slightly curved in two spots to show off a couple of knots I just didn't have the heart to take out. You can kind of see them in the photos, but they're not super obvious.
The first picture is just the desktop, to show off the gorgeous redwood grain. The other shows my computer set-up. The photo credit, by the way, for the graphic being shown on my dual-screen rig is by Ryan Bliss, of DigitalBlasphemy.com. I simply cannot recommend his work highly enough.
Addendum #1: Wondering what’s on my desk? From left to right: Logitech THX speaker (one of two, the other is not visible, and the subwoofer is on the floor). A fake Tiffany-style stained-glass lamp (using Phillips latest LED-based natural-light bulbs). A detailed scale model of Serenity, a cargo spaceship from the TV series “Firefly” (later made into a movie bearing the ship’s name). Digital self-setting clock. Eyeglass cloth and a case for my desk-work glasses, with a large obsidian egg — which I found as a rock at our last house, then shaped and polished myself. Two monitors, both ViewSonics, but not the exact same model. Then along the front: A coaster, of course — I’m not gonna mark up this desk! Then a Logitech G13 gamepad, Logitech illuminated keyboard, and Cyborg R.A.T. 7 customizable/programmable mouse. Oh, and a Radio Shack wireless intercom unit on the far right, because sometimes we’re too lazy to walk to the other end of the house when we need to say something.
Addendum #2: What’s the deal with ‘old-growth’ redwood versus the kind most folks know from their picnic tables and outdoor furniture?
About 150 years ago, give or take, the original redwood forests were being exploited like crazy because the wood was unbelievably good for just about everything. Huge trees, so lots of lumber in them. Fire-resistant as a natural property, and resistant to the elements. Plus it just looks nice. It became a very popular building material, especially in the American west.
So they cut down nearly all of them. Well, not quite, but around the turn of the 20th century, conservation groups were openly predicting the complete disappearance of these ancient forests. Some groups began buying up land, just to try to keep the oldest trees from being cut down for lumber — and some of these are now state parks in California and Oregon.
The thing about redwoods is when you cut one down, it will resprout from its roots. It’s amazing in this way, because redwoods have multiple ways of propagating themselves. If you walk into a redwood forest and see a circle of them, there’s a good chance they’re all related, and might even be sharing some of the same root systems, or did at one time.
Redwoods that regrow on clear-cut land however grow differently than their forebears. They grow faster, with much thicker rings and softer wood overall. If you look at the grain lines on what most call “second growth redwood,” they’ll tend to be spaced widely apart. In one part of my newly finished desk, I counted about 25 years of winters across an inch and a half of surface. Some are so close together, I can barely see they’re there.
So anyway, that’s why we put such an effort first into storing these beauties, these raw slabs and lumber, and have been hauling them with us from house to house. This kind (and quality) of wood is not exactly common.
Gorgeous! What a treasure. Nice work!
Addendum #3: For those curious about the process details–