Sakura Media Console
桜 - Sakura - Cherry blossom
Part I
“A tree is our most intimate contact with nature.
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Our lives, whether we actively seek to or not, are invariably connected with our environment. Depending on where you live, you might be surrounded by trees on all sides — as I had in childhood — or you might just pass one or two by on the sidewalk on the way to work. Either way, they offer an imposing presence. A constant reminder that while we are masters of the environment, we are nowhere near its largest subjects.
I have been building furniture from wood for three years now, and almost exclusively my stock, a woodworkers term for lumber, has come from a lumberyard. It’s like a grocery store for woodworkers. Anything and everything, trees from far and near, are available by the board foot.
When my mother told me some trees were to be chopped down that were threatening her house, I told her to not let them take anything away until I came home. What I found when I arrived were these wonderfully large, straight logs of Cherry. I knew there would be something special underneath that bark, so I told her to get them milled. Once cut into slabs , these beasts would have to dry for several years before I could touch a blade to them.
Fast-forward two years, I went to pick from the pile to build a floating desk in our new home. After selecting a couple of good looking boards, I drove them back to NYC in my climate controlled car. I could hear them cracking and my heart started to sink. A seasoned woodworker knows that wood, even after sitting for years, is a living being. It twists, cups, cracks and swells with the seasons. Once I got back to the woodshop, I laid out the boards, weighed them down so they wouldn’t move too much and let them acclimate as I worked on other projects.
When I was finally ready to begin, I could already see that I was shit out of luck. These boards were twisted more than I could have imagined. I was not going to have enough to make the desk so they sat again, waiting for another use.
Months went by and I was ready to come back to them. I needed to make a media console for our basement and I thought I had just the right amount so I started milling. With each successive run through the planer, more and more figures started to appear. When one looks at a living tree, all they see is the bark. Great woodworkers have x-ray vision and can imagine what a tree looks like undressed. I’m not a great woodworker yet, so I was excited to see what I could not imagine.
To be continued…