The Colorado Table has been in the works for about a year. I've done an live edge table project before but have resisted since then because it's so prevalent. There are so many great ideas on how the tables legs should be done that I didn't think there was a need for me to jump in. The Colorado Table, however, was different. I had heard about beatle-kill pine before from a friend at MOLD. She showed me photos of the wood grain and I was hooked.

The problem for me was that I don't usually work with pine. While pine wood is a ubiquitous material to work with in the construction industry, it is not in the fine woodworking segment that I "grew up" with. For one, it gums up woodworking tools and moves unpredictably even after drying and finishing. One day, while browsing through my local lumber yard, I came across this slab and had to have it.

This beatle-kill pine lab sat in storage for about a year since I brought it back to the shop. I kept puzzling over what I should do with it; which side of the slab should display? Since it came from the Black Forest Fire, the slab's live edge still retained some of the charred remains. What ever I end up with, the other features should not distract from its natural character...

I relented. It was going to be a coffee table and its legs should not visually over power the top. This Colorado Table features a detachable base that can be folded up for transportation. The top's corners around rounded so that accidental bumps would not cause serious injury.

And, the underside of the table is engraved with the origin of the slab so that we will always remember how it came to be.