Baller Craftsmanship

My friend and fellow blogmate, Chris, works for a custom home builder. They specialize in really high-end projects, basically meaning that they only build homes for millionaires (or if you are in Mumbai, MILLENAIRES). So what does this have to do with me? Well, Chris' company works with a particularly baller individual who owns and operates his own wood mill. He makes all sorts of custom pieces ranging from cabinets to trim to desks. I recently found myself in need of some custom items for my furniture project and Chris came through for me big time. NBD.

You might recall that the coffee table and end table that I am working on have glass inlays which serve as the main surface of the furniture. I'm not really down with this look and anyway, glass can break. I've been dreading the day that someone throws their feet up on the table and CRASH - they put their heel right through the glass. Hey, it could happen. I thought it would be a good idea to replace the glass with something more durable and that could be painted to match. Wood sounds like a grand idea. The pieces of glass are roughly 1/4 inch thick. I picked Chris' brain about what would be best suited for this type of application. We decided that a simple 1/4" piece of plywood wouldn't be great because thin plywood warps really easily and isn't very strong. We also decided that a 1/4" piece of solid wood would be expensive and difficult to come by. That type of thing would probably need to be milled down or cut from something thicker anyway. Chris came up with the idea to make a matching rabbeted piece that would mate with the rabbeted surface of the tables.

What is a rabbet? It's not a little furry animal with big ears that eats carrots. It's a groove that is cut out of the edge of a piece of wood, normally for the purpose of mating it with another surface. Think of Tetris.

We decided this was the way to go because we could use a thicker piece of wood for added strength and less likelihood of warping, but it would still sit flush with the surface of the table. Pretty simple, but not something that I have the experience or the tools to accomplish. Chris said he'd ask their wood-guy if he could cut up some pieces to the specs I needed. I drew up a sketch using Adobe Illustrator and sent it off to Chris.



As you can see, I needed three pieces, each 16x16 inches and then a fourth piece measuring 16x22 inches. They would need to be 3/4" thick with a 1/4" rabbet cut into the edges.


Later on that evening, Chris came by my house with the four pieces of plywood all beautifully cut. Very baller indeed.