Nicholas Berchtold, Tufted Table V2 (WORLD 2022)

Photos:

Oscar Sobolewski

Country:

United States of America

The tufted tabletop is a cookie cut honey locust root burl slab with bark inclusions and matching inlayed locust butterfly inlays (sourced in Chicago, IL - sawn and dried in Decatur, MI). The base is solid 8/4 walnut composed of 165 mitered segments made using a Tom Lohman wedgie sled with the table saw into 17 rings - which were flattened and stacked into two blanks and then precision 3&4 axis CNC milled. Connecting the pedestal to the base is a massive machined mortise and tenon. The base features a tufted pattern that I have been developing for a couple years with round head hand polished solid brass hardware, which grows proportionately to the base diameter. I don’t think there’s a detail on this piece that is not round. Check out the underside of the tabletop - I could not keep an inch of surface untouched, it was 3-axis CNC carved using the same design geometry as the base. I pulled out every single tool in my shop to fabricate this table all the way from rough sawn lumber to the polished table in this post. The top was finished with Rubio Monocoat Pure 2C & is 42 inches in diameter and the base was sprayed with satin polyurethane and its diameter ranges from 24” to 8” in diameter and the whole piece is 29.5” tall. I designed this piece in Rhino V7, programmed the G-Code in RhinoCam21 and I machined all the parts using a combination of a Haas TM1 & Camaster Stinger III. For me this was an exploration of what CNC machining can bring to fine woodworking. It was difficult for me to explain every detail in this piece, so as part of my photo submission I have included an exploded axonometric drawing of its construction. @berchtolddesignbuild

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.