In addition to beautiful bespoke hardwood flooring Ultra Interior can create stunning table slabs to complete your interior. These are made to order with each and every example being unique and one of a kind. The material is sourced from private land owners where the tree is a very old specimen requiring felling.
Starting with large individual section of the tree trunk the raw material remains a long period air drying sometimes this process is over many years due to the thickness of the pieces. The material is then kilned and prepared for working into a beautiful and practical surface.
Recent projects include unusually large and rare sections of English Burr Oak which were selected particularly intense amount of the burr feature. These table slabs were created for a number of very high profile stores including Liberty’s and Harrods London.
After sourcing the over 100 year old tree locally work started on the slabs in the workshop. The perimeter bark was removed to reveal the live edge cambium then moulded and blended – all by hand. The surface was also hand crafted inch by inch over many hours to remove the sawing marks but also to retain and emphasise the natural undulation of the Oaks surface. After lavishly hand application of Oils the slabs were finished to the complete satisfaction of the client.
Another of the latest slab projects was for a client who commissioned Ultra Interior to create a dining table for their new Cheshire home.
The scale of the required piece was a challenge in finding the suitable raw material. In order to achieve the size a massive 130 year old Cedar tree was sourced which had been cut and been air drying for over 4 years. Once back at the workshop the 3.5m x 1.1m slab was re-cut to the required length. The edges were sculptured to emphasise the chamfer profile which indicates the original position of the slice within the log. These edges were hand worked to draw out the softer wood and show off the heavy but fluid grain profile.
Another challenge were the interesting bark intrusions which initially looked quite sound but on being worked were found to have a lot of decayed material within. These unusually positioned features are where birds and squirrels have delved into the body of the tree to nest, over many decades the wound in surface begins to heal itself by way of growing a bark skin. These unusual features are also sometimes caused by an injury to the tree such as storm damage where large splits open up the limbs of a tree, again over many decades bark begins to form and skin over these wounds. In order to keep the bark intrusions and be part of a practical surface the decay was carefully removed and the area specially treated. Small sections of sound material also over 100 years old was skilfully used to match and infill the bark intrusion enabling them to be retained and create a distinctive feature to this huge table. Hand finishing and planting the slab onto a bespoke made steel base completed this one off unique huge dining table.
Examples of these very bespoke table slabs can be seen in the ‘Collections’ section of the website under ‘Ultra Table Slabs’
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