Custom Woodworking in Santa Rosa

River tables

A river table is two slabs with their natural edges facing each other and resin poured into the gap between them. Because the edge shape comes from the tree, no two are repeatable — which is the point.

The work is mostly in what happens after the pour. The slabs have to be stabilised and sealed before any resin goes in, because a pour into unprepared wood picks up air and bleeds colour into the grain. Once cured, the whole top gets flattened and sanded through the grits so the resin and the wood finish dead flush. That flattening stage, not the pour, is what separates a table that looks like glass from one that looks like a craft project.

Working with the material instead of against it

The live-edge cat tree is the clearest example. Every cat tree in a store is carpeted MDF tubes on a square base. Gary built one around an actual branching trunk and used the natural forks as the climbing route, so the platforms sit where the tree had already decided to branch.

The same thinking runs through the arched garden bridge — the stringers are genuinely curved rather than a flat deck on a ramp, so every deck board is a different length and both handrails follow the same sweep.

Wood moves, and the base has to allow it

A solid slab expands and contracts across its width with the seasons. This is not a defect and it cannot be prevented — it can only be allowed for.

Fixing a slab rigidly to a steel base at both ends means the base wins and the top splits, usually in the first winter. The fixings have to let the top move across its width while holding it flat. It is invisible, it takes longer, and it is the difference between a table that lasts and one that cracks.