Walnut slabs from the kiln yesterday

Written By Robin Wade

walnut slabsWalnut slabs from the kiln yesterday

In 2008 we purchased a few more walnut logs, but this time we cut a few of them into quite thick rounds and left the bark on.  We air dried them for several years and in May of this year placed them in the kiln (offsite) for their final cure.  We just received them back from the kiln yesterday and I can't wait to dive in and see what we've got here.  Typically I avoid cutting rounds primarily because of the way wood shrinks resulting in lots of wedge shaped pieces of the walnut pie.  These rounds seem (at first glance) to have held up a bit better.  We'll see.

Walnut slabs from the kiln walnut slabs on truckyesterday

Robin Wade
Robin Wade Furniture is a celebration of nature—a melding of a forward thinking commitment to the environment and a quiet, harmonious design aesthetic. From his "slow studio" in North Alabama, award-winning wood artist Robin Wade designs and crafts one-of-a-kind handmade furniture. Years before a piece is ready to enter a client's home or a gallery, the process begins—naturally—with the tree. Sustainably harvested, each specimen of hardwood is flitch sawn into natural-edge wood slabs, debarked by hand with a draw knife, and stacked to dry, usually for years, before the final cure in the kiln. From here, Wade and his team use both hand and power tools to bring Wade's vision to life, and then finish each piece with a hand-rubbed oil blend. Each organic furniture creation by Robin Wade Furniture balances the raw, natural beauty of environmentally, locally sourced hardwoods with minimally invasive, clean lines—a juxtaposition Wade calls both rustic and modern. “I haven’t yet found a better artist than nature,” he says.
robinwadefurniture.com
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