The Most Expensive Wood Slabs to Date - Live Edge Wood Buying Guide - Woodworking Tutorials

Hi, I'm Cam with Black Death Studio and this week I'll be walking you through the purchasing process of the

most

expensive

slabs

I've ever purchased and this one isn't even close to the

most

expensive

, it's by far the most expensive. I have ever spent on

slabs

for a single table. Also, this is not a gobi walnut ad. I paid retail for these slabs like you would, but my client was on the east coast and we needed to find some slabs without him having to fly here. To see them, I went to the Goby website and showed him the Gobi website.

We went from one place to another. I'll show you the ones we found here in a moment, but first I wanted to show you how you can search by size and length. price species anything you want it's actually a pretty good website for a small business you can see there I went to the 51 inches and wider and then sorted from largest to smallest there was a slab there that I clicked on just for fun because it was 20,000 and this is not the slab I ended up

buying

mine was much cheaper. I just wanted to show you the most expensive slab you can buy at Gobi Walnut. 21,000 is crazy.

My client and I found a series of slabs from a tree that really really stood out against all the other slabs we found, they were a walnut bastone and we needed two slabs to make this table and I'll show you kind of a rendering of what this one would look like. table at the end, but we needed two slabs, so I asked Aaron from Goby Walnut to pull out these seven slabs to see which ones we liked best and you can see that two of them had a really big crack in the middle, so much so that they were essentially two separate slabs and those were My original idea because the client came to me looking for an epoxy table and we went away from that, you can see there, we didn't love these, they had that big bark inclusion that would end up having to be filled with epoxy. big cracks, I think they're cool, but you can't really tell it's a single slab that big and wide, so we didn't love them and I had an in-person session looking at them with him to go over this. step by step, something to keep in mind is that when the tree is cut, it is much prettier than it is after it hardens and takes on what they call scale, so you may not find them as impressive.

I have seen enough of these slabs and enough of this

wood

to know what is really nice

wood

and these are truly amazing. If you know what, if you work in wood, you can probably see it too. If you don't work in wood, you're probably thinking I am. It's crazy to spend this amount of money on these slabs, but you can really see the color starting to appear there. You'll have to ignore a lot of dirt and water stains, that lighter sapwood on top. There is something really important to note and you really just have to look beyond the superficial things, there is the

date

it was cut, which is really useful and that is the series on the slab that was slab number 12 of this tree , this is the Same

date

, a kind of serial number and then slab 13, so you know those are a book match and they were next to each other on the tree.

That V shape is called the crotch of the tree and that's where you'll almost always be. get a ton of figures and these slabs are no exception, they have tons of color, tons of figures, they are going to be absolutely beautiful, especially near that v, near that crotch, this one at the end had a lot of water spots, which is not a big deal, all of that will disappear when you bring it to the surface, but it's a little hard to miss because this one looks like a big dirty slab, you can't see that color, you can't see it.

Look at that figure, so I'm relying a little bit on the slab next to it to calculate, but what I liked about this one is that it was almost a perfect match for 13. It had an almost identical crack that you can see down there, which is just a water stain. Those dark marks you just need to be able to look past those superficial aspects and see if the wood is going to be as pretty as you hope and sometimes you even need to sand some of that off, but I can tell from this. and the other slabs, it is absolutely remarkable since I was spending so much money on these slabs.

I wanted to get some questions answered and this is Aaron, he calls himself the vice president of Gobi Walnut but he is actually the owner and he knows a lot. about wood and I actually have a really interesting segment with him at the end of this video where I ask him a bunch of questions about what is a fair price for wood, why these slabs are so expensive and if he feels bad cutting down trees big. so I'll show you the price of these slabs in a moment, but first I want to show you the ones that I bought and these were slabs 13 and 14 and it was pretty clear that 12, 13 and 14 were the best slabs that had the smallest cracks, the biggest amount of color, the most figures 13 and 14 were simply the best combination with each other and as this will be a book combination table, I wanted them to be as close to each other as possible, some of you may have noticed. that there are no

live

edge

s on these slabs and they are over 60 inches wide, how is that possible?

And that's how this possibly came from a tree that was about nine feet wide, so I'll have Erin explain it at the end of the video. Why specifically wasn't there a

live

edge

on these? But just for scale, this is what the tree looked like when it was standing. It's pretty remarkable, and speaking of notable trees, this is one they have there right now. Rumored to be the largest walnut tree in the world. North America or perhaps the world had a diameter of more than 12 feet. They have a 13 foot cookie. They cut it. They are two halves of the same tree.

They had to search half way for him just to get him on a truck. What's awesome is that they are setting up a special mill right now just to cut this log because their existing mill can't cut anything that big, so I'm really excited to see what these slabs look like again, potentially the largest nut. tree in North America, so these slabs won't be dry until January 2022, so we're a long way off, but here's the basic idea my client has: he wants two tables that form a single table that can potentially be separated and I wanted legs that looked designed together so they didn't look like two individual table bases, so I messaged Alex from Flowy Line and told him my idea.

I told him the size we will use and this is what he roughly came up with. five minutes, I think these designs that you already came up with are really cool, we're going to have a lot of exchanges. I'm sure before we get to the design, the client likes it as much as I do, but that's the kind of direction we're going in, I also wanted to show you kind of a very nice basic brown walnut slab for comparison. , just so you can see why these slabs cost so much money and this one again was very expensive, this is the one we bought and you.

I can see it's a far cry from that plain old brown and you might like brown more but this is amazing to me I think it's so much prettier it will just be a burst of color figure unlike any slap I've ever had . ever seen, you can go to the goby website and you will not find any other slabs like this other than these from this single tree and again there is another plain brown slab that costs 6600 and if you didn't see it, these slabs were 66 and I think 6300, so almost 13 dollars for these two slabs, but I think it's worth it, the customer thinks it's worth it and I'm really excited to get started.

One of the questions I get all the time is where are clients located? that will spend ten thousand dollars on a table or thirty thousand dollars in this case and they usually find me through my website. I think this guy actually found me through YouTube, which I think he's cool, he's a contractor and here's one of the houses. He built and this might be the most beautiful house I have ever seen and first of all it only cost 15 million. I want to apologize, so I'm going to start saving now. I hope it's still for sale when I get there.

Here's another one. The house he built cost 25 million dollars. The good thing about working with a contractor of this caliber is that he knows what it will cost to get something perfect. He understands the cost of materials, so it's been really great to work with him so far. First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of videos in recent weeks. It's been a crazy transition moving into my new shop. I'm basically working alone 24 hours a day, just trying to get the shop going. I have done new electrical, which I actually had help from my brother-in-law, but I am adding conduit.

We already made an addition to the shop where we have an attached space for the dust collector and air compressor. Many new and interesting tools. I even have a new workshop. electric heater that heats up the entire store, really cool stuff and if you can stay with me for a few more weeks I promise I'll be back to my regular rotation of a new video every Thursday if you missed it before. The total cost of these slabs is twelve thousand nine hundred dollars. The total cost of the table to the customer will be 32,000, which includes the base.

Everything complete, but does not include shipping. I know that when things are this expensive there will be a lot. of questions especially about the wood, how do you know why these slabs are so expensive, how old was this tree? Are you a complete idiot for spending so much on wood? There are a lot of great questions like that, so I wanted Aaron, the owner of the Gobi Walnut Tree, to come forward. of some of these questions and take a couple of minutes to answer all the questions I think of asking. If there's anything I left out, be sure to ask me in the comments.

I talk to Aaron pretty regularly and we can get answers to those questions. you down in the comments below my name is aaron I'm the vice president here at gobi walnut portland oregon although this was a hemlock walnut and it was seven feet wide at the waist and went up to about 12 feet to the crotch which is the split on the tree, I think some of the branches were almost 40 inches wide as well, so it's a pretty big tree, there are no live edges on these slabs because our sock can only cut 65 inches wide and this tree had seven feet wide at the narrow part. period, so we had to take it down with the chainsaw just to fit it into the mill, so basically the whole exterior was like this big cube, does that mean I don't have to pay for wasted wood?

Yes, we don't actually charge you for what we cut, so yes, I feel bad cutting down an old laurel tree. I think a lot depends on the tree. Most of the time these trees are dead and dying, so they are going to come down anyway, I think in that case it's hard to see the tree fall and it's sad, even though it has to fall, it's harder when the tree is totally healthy and someone is just tired of it and wants to take it down, um, did you witness three of them fall or die, this tree was dying, yeah, how long did it take the three of them to get it up?

So compared to softwoods, hardwoods like walnut, white oak, and maple don't really live as long here in the Willamette Valley because the amount of moisture, so it'll be up to 150 years old at most, the Most of them, like a mature walnut tree, here are approximately 80 years old, how old do you think your tree was? This tree was probably over 100 years old, maybe 100 to 120 years old, uh, so this slab per board foot was about 40 in big, really big, oversized pieces, it'll charge 30 to maybe 45 or 50 dollars. per board foot, depending on the width and length, the reason we charge so much, it takes an extremely long period of time to dry this material, usually one year per inch of thickness, that's the amount of time you have to air dry and then it has to be kiln dried beyond that, usually three to four months, so you have the drying time and then you have all the machinery needed to process these large oversized pieces and then you need a pile of dirt to store the material what is the most possible yardage range for walnut view uh let's see what is the cheapest material we have Sell it by one inch thick as short material, it will cost between 350 and four dollars per foot.

Maybe the most expensive material, like what is really considered very large and oversized, will be 60 square feet, the higher end. Now my cousin found a guy on Facebook selling sycamore slabs. For five dollars on board a foot that was the same size as this one, why are they so expensive? There are so many offers on Facebook. The reason these slabs are so expensive is because they are properly air and kiln dried so how much machining we are charging in the price of the board foot, the other reason these slabs are so expensive is because Bastogne For example, it's a hybrid, so all the material we get is maybe two or three percent of the makeup in our inventory and then the color, so Bath Stone is a combination of English walnut and light walnut, so which you have a lot of the browns and blacks that you get in English walnut, but then you have some of the reds and purples and oranges, so when you combine those two colors, I think it'ssecond to none when you look at all of our domestic hardwood species that we have here in the US, you told me these slabs won't be ready until January 2022.

Why can they? You just put them in a kiln and you get it much faster, so we can't just put these slabs in a kiln right away because if you do, you'll find a lot of defects when drying, mainly warping and checking, so the name of the The game in drying wood is low and slow, so if you dry something too quickly, what you will do is harden the outside of the slab and then trap all the moisture inside, and then you will have problems right away and in the future. deformation, control and torsion, but drying well and slowly allows moisture to move from the center of the slab to the outside of the slab without being impeded.

The other reason is that you can't put the walnut slabs in the oven right away, so when you first cut the walnut you get a little more yellow or green color so it doesn't turn brown until it oxidizes and doesn't It will rust if you dry it right away, so it has to sit outside, it can be indoors or indoors, but it just needs to be exposed to air for an extended period of time, it can't just go in the oven and be disposed of right away to anyone who just cuts their own wood at home and hauls away.

Do you have any advice for them if you are cutting your own wood at home? I think the most important thing to remember is to take care of the material, it's that simple, so when the logs arrive you want to make sure you seal the ends so they don't crack or split and then the logs can sit for a while. They will not be damaged after that, once you cut the material you will need to reseal the ends so they do not crack or split, that is because moisture leaves the ends of the boards faster than any other surface and then, the most important part. is gluing it down, so that's when you stack the wood, but then you put spacers between the wood to allow air to pass through the material.

If you don't hit it right away, a lot of times what's going to happen is it's going to build up. mold so that the material starts to change color, it looks really original, so you need to glue it down to allow it to dry and then you need to make sure it's out of the sun and you need to make sure it's covered, so if it's out of In the sun, you will avoid the possibility of your material hardening. You know where you're trapping moisture inside and then if it's covered, you're not reintroducing moisture. The material slows down the drying process.

Okay, that's all. video Big thanks to Aaron from Gobi Walnut for taking the time for that awkward little interview on my iPhone, but to thank him this week, start your question or comment with gobi g-o-b-and that way I'll know you watch the full video and I promise. First I will answer all his questions or comments, thank you again and subscribe to see more videos like this.