In 2015 a huge thuja came down at my in-laws yard to make way for two small weekend houses. The tree was so big it had to be cut in slabs in order to haul them away. As a kid my wife and her siblings used to play inside the tree which was like a cathedral for them. Knowing the emotional value that this tree had for my family I saved some of those slabs. I knew I wanted to build something with them.

Fast forward to 2019: While researching how I can flatten one of the larger thuja chunks I found a small router in the basement of my families weekend house in Rekawinkel. The router and several other powertools belonged to my wife’s grandfather who was the director of a childrens hospital and an avid woodworker and handyman. The little old router needed some simple repairs and soon I was able to flatten the slab with a planing slide. I also found a powerful belt sander to fine tune the surface and finished it with linseed oil. After attaching nice looking mid-century hairpin legs I really had built my first table.

This table is rather clunky so I decided to make the other tables a little more sophisticated regarding their dimensions. Therefore I bought a large japanese saw called Temagori Nokogiri to cut this slab in easier to handle disks. I repeated planing, sanding, finishing and again attached nice looking mid-century hairpin legs.

Last year I started to collect old skateboards because the wood is of excellent quality and the colored veener is simply beautiful. I slice the decks on the table saw and glue them together to obtain a solid block of wood. Then I use a router (a new one because the aforementioned small router is dead now – RIP) to shape these blocks into small serving trays.