Technical Details

Woods Used: Redwood slab with purpleheart bowtie inlays and sapele legs (can be removed for transport)
Slab Size: Approx. 20in diameter
Table Height: 25.6in
Finish: 220grit followed by hardwax oil (Rubio Monocoat) and ceramic top coat (Black Forrest)

Project Challenges and Lessons Learned:
I thought redwood slabs (being softer) would be easier to work with then the hardwoods I had done thus far - I was completely wrong. So much went wrong with this project, it's a miracle it came out the way it did. So why is redwood difficult to work with? From my first and only experience so far, I would say there are at least 3 reasons:

1. Very porous grain which acts like a sponge. Both water and oil penetrate deep and unevenly.
2. Redwood is soft but can contain substantially harder knots
3. Tannic acid

(1) This slab was destined for trouble right from the beginning. I went on a hunt for a walnut cookie and came across a slab shop in Halfmoon Bay, CA. The owner gave me a screaming deal: 40% off the walnut plus 2 redwood cookies thrown in there for free - sold! I took it all home and patiently let them air dry, closely monitoring them with my moisture meter. This is where the first problem starts. I purchased the slabs near the end of summer and left them in the garage. Shortly thereafter a heatwave hit our area and turned the garage into an oven. All of that water baked out of the wood rapidly and caused enough internal stress to crack the slab in 3 separate areas. The porous nature of redwood also made the finishing process more difficult as the oil did not want to consistently absorb. It took me 2 finishing tries to get it right.

(2) This makes sanding particularly difficult. The softwood areas are really soft, and the knots are really hard. Even a second or two of extra sanding in a particular area can cause dips and unevenness. The softness is also not very structural. This proved to make the leg hardware attachment difficult and I ended up needing to use pressfit standoffs with internal threading instead of the normal externally threaded inserts that just chewed up the wood.

(3) This is the stuff that redwood naturally produces to resist fungus and termites. It forms a spotty or blotchy black pattern throughout the wood that can't be completely sanded away (because it's penetrated throughout the wood) and can look like mold. If you do a good job sanding, cleaning, and finishing the slab it comes out alright, but your best bet is to start with a cut that doesn't have as much of this build up. Besides bleaching your wood (which will affect the surrounding red color) I do not have a solution for this yet.

With all this said, I have another redwood cookie in the garage (also cracked...) waiting to be made into something. I'm exciting to take what I learned from round 1 and apply it to the next one.

I wanted to also make a quick note regarding the bowties. Since I had to make a good number of them I tried out a new technique using my hand router. I made custom acrylic templates for both the positives and the negatives. The negative are pretty straight forward. The positive involved a bit more creativity on how to fixture the template. Taking my time with multiple passes worked pretty well. The small ones were more difficult. I honestly haven't found many people online that did it my way where you route around the outside of a template instead of the inside. I think this works better, but maybe I am just bad with a hand router.