Bench – Ironwood and Cocobolo
The seat is desert ironwood and the primary leg piece is cocobolo. The third leg and other structural elements are bolivian rosewood. I love Nakashima’s work and when I found the ironwood piece it was an obvious choice of style to utilize its natural edge and fantastically tight intricate grain patterns. Plus it is literally like iron (I lost a table saw blade just doing the end cutoffs) so even with heavy use by kids putting on shoes and using it as the entryway drop zone every day the wear is nonexistent. The cocobolo leg is from a single piece cut into three lengths and fitted into a slight fan-shape, with the sapwood giving the striping effect when assembled. The materials are all very substantial woods, and the geometries and tenons combine to make this piece amazingly stable and able to handle a tremendous load.
Finished in Watco Danish oil.
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The scream from the saw when this wood is cut will make any woodworker cringe. Not a sound you want to hear in your shop!
They don't call it Ironwood for nothing.
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Comments
That is a beautiful table. Wonderful lines on it. What kind of finish did you put on it?
Thanks Trout. The finish is Danish oil. The cocobolo has a lot of natural oil and it can be difficult to get a polyurethane to adhere correctly without a lot of pre-treating with shellac and such, so I went with the old standby of sanding like mad and the oil. Also, the ironwood is so dense that it took an amazing polish on its own, so the oil was the right choice in the end anyway. I actually had to back off the ironwood a bit when sanding because areas were starting to burnish and it was getting uneven, but 320grit and patience solved it.
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