Paul Downs Cabinetmakers

PAUL DOWNS CABINETMAKERS 401 E. 4th St, Bldg. 8, 4th Floor • Bridgeport, PA • 19405 Phone: 610 239 0142 • Fax: 610 239 0732 • [email protected] www.pauldowns.com

August 25, 2007

Let me tell you a little story. A short tale about a very large piece of wood, from a very old bubinga tree. This tree was growing in the rain forest in Cameroon. Conditions were such that it grew to be quite large before it was cut, milled, and sent to America. The tree was bought by Hearne Hardwoods, in Pennsylvania, and the individual boards were stacked to await sale. They ranged in size from 40 to 70 inches wide, and 20 feet long. Truly enormous pieces of wood – far larger than anything that grows in the United States.

Since this wood was of exceptional quality (and price), a special project was appropriate. Fortunately, my client Ron Shenkin was looking for an unusual dining table, and he called me to discuss options. We went over a number of approaches, finally settling on a table consisting of a single slab of wood, 10 feet long and 5 feet wide. Then we started looking at what wood we could find that would achieve this, and came across the bubinga slabs.

We selected a single board to make the table, server, and most of the chairs. It’s initial size was 152” long, 3” thick, and 64-67” wide. Gargantuan. Working with wood this large presents a number of technical difficulties, starting with trying to move it: it’s very heavy. So we cut the board into two pieces to get it into our shop. Once it arrived, we let it sit for a couple of weeks so that it would acclimate to our humidity levels. During this time it was apparent that, even though you can take the board out the tree, you can’t take the tree out of the board. The wood was moving significantly at every change of the weather.

So the decision was made to cut the table top into two pieces, so that we could relieve some of the internal stress, and make it easier to flatten and finish the top. I didn’t want a straight line joint between the two pieces (boring!) so we milled a serpentine joint, and then finished the overall sizing and inlay work on the top. We also cut all of the parts of the base, servers, and chairs from the other piece of wood.

The pieces were assembled and finished by a team of skilled cabinetmakers: Andy Cole, Nathan Rossman, Jim Breece, Rick Kirk, and Paul Kopf. Total shop time was 179 hours.

I am very pleased with the result. This is a one-of-a-kind piece made from one-of-a-kind wood.

Paul C. Downs Bridgeport, Pennsylvania