Boardroom Table: Jas. Becker Cabinetmaker just completed the installation of the largest table I have ever made, a 24 foot long, 8 1/2 foot wide, bow-sided table with a birdseye maple veneered top in seven sections.  The  stainless steel base (with painted steel superstructure) was provided by Master Metal Works of S. El Monte, CA.

This table project done for Global Forest Partners LP Global Forest Partners LP is one of the oldest and largest timber investment management organizations. GFP currently manages a globally diverse USD2.7 billion portfolio of closed-end commingled timberfunds on behalf of institutional and other qualified investors.

Here follows a very dry, pretty comprehensive, description of the process that gives no clue as to the amount of time thought, and often muscle needed to complete the project:

The process began with the building of a 18 foot by 5 foot melamine -topped glue-up table.  This table also served to anchor the glue-up “form” used to laminate the maple “bowed” edges.  It was expanded to 8 feet wide when it came time to glue the veneer to the panels.  The first task was to “condition” the nine foot long, 33″ wide sections of birdseye maple veneer.  This entailed painting both sides of the veneer sheet with a mixture of white glue, alcohol, glycerin, and water.  The damp sheets were sandwiched between two pieces of fiberglass screen and surrounded by several sheets of blank newsprint paper, then put between two sheet of 3/4 inch melamine and  inserted into the vacuum press, sucked flat, and left for several hours.  At the end of that time the vacuum press was opened,  the newsprint was switched out for dry sheets and then replaced in the vacuum bag; this process was repeated 5 times.  I pressed 13 sheets of veneer, two at a time; it took a week of work.  Simultaneously while the veneer “conditioning was going on I, once-a-day glued up a laminated, bowed, solid maple table edged segment using the “form”  built onto the edge of the glue-up table (mentioned below).  After the veneer was “moisturized”, dried in this manner, and stored pressed between MDF panels, I could start in making the panels.

The table top consists of seven “sandwiched” panels each composed of a core of one-inch thick birch plywood layered between two sheets of half-inch thick lightweight MDF.  The six larger segments have a four foot by two foot cut-out in the plywood core into which I  inserted a piece of one inch thick epoxy impregnated corrugated cardboard to help lighten the finished panels.  Each segment has a one inch thick solid maple edge; the outer bowed edges were laminated on an eighteen foot long “fair-curved” pattern built onto the edge of the glue-up table.  This pattern was also used to route the curves into the edge of the six bowed table-top sections  prior to gluing on of the matching curved laminated edges.  Finally the  panels were veneered with plain maple on the bottom and birdseye-maple on the top surface, then holes were drilled for the 3 1/2 inch brushed aluminum wire grommets from Doug Mockett and Company, sanded, filled, sprayed, filled again, then spray finished twice more with M.L. Campbell “Krystal” finish.

The seven sections were assembled on site using 1/2 inch thick shop-made maple “biscuits”  and “Tite Joint Fasteners” and screwed to the base.  Then the three maple edged, stainless steel “IT” trays were screwed to the bottom of the assembled tables positioned under the wire grommets.

James Becker Cabinet Maker from colin becker on Vimeo.

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I am Jim Becker and my business is Jas. Becker Cabinetmaker, Incorporated.  I’ve been making custom, reproduction and my own original design furniture beginning January 1, 1987 in Lebanon, N.H. and since the summer of 1990 in Wilder, Vermont.  My woodworking background includes most of a year working at Lash Brothers Boatyard in Friendship, Maine (1979 to 1980) where I helped to build a 65 foot wood fishing boat and five and a half years working at Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, then in New Gloucester and Auburn, Maine (1980 to 1986) where I learned to make beautiful furniture.

More than half my work is custom or one-of-a-kind pieces.  As often as not I am designing and building to compliment existing decor.  Orders range in size from a single footstool to a four bedroom home in Michigan and a similar size townhouse in NYC.  Many of the amateur photos here came from one or the other of the latter two orders.  I love the challenge of making new items and many of my favorite projects have been desks, the most recent example being the Cylinder Desk pictured elsewhere on this site.