Redwood Burl Coffee Table

Redwood Burl Coffee Table

This is a slab of redwood burl that I purchased at a garage sale in 2005 and made into a coffee table. The thing is pretty big.

3 foot x 4 foot x 3" thick

Pictures were taken in the basement so please excuse the 80s carpet and all the stuff in the background. I'm cleaning things out still.

Think about the recent posts showing the giant redwoods. A burl would be a growth on the side of one of those trees. This is only a slab of the burl, so you can imagine how big it really would be.

I've always been a big fan of George Nakashima furniture. So when I cut the legs and attached them, I thought about his style and how he would do it. I inset the legs, so that it would look like the piece was floating.

In the pictures, I am kneeling down so you can see the thickness of the edge. At normal height you would never see the legs. Additionally I used an old hand drill and auger bit to drill holes for the legs. They are set into pockets with glue and shims.

REDWOOD BURL
Burls are the knobby growths often seen at the base of coast redwoods. Burl can also be found higher in the canopy too. Burl is wood that is full of unsprouted bud tissue that grows in lumps on the sides of trees. The genetic code of the tree is stored in the burl.

GEORGE NAKASHIMA
George Katsutoshi Nakashima was an American woodworker, architect, and furniture maker who was one of the leading innovators of 20th century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement.