$17,000 Table Was Refused

A few months ago I get this email that says, Hi, I'm interested in a rectangle dining table, 7 feet long and walnut, Blaine. And I reply with my usual, Sure, tell me a little bit more about what you're looking for. And over the next week or so we bounce a few emails back and forth, nailing down the details, including Blaine's budget, $17,000. Now, usually that's the hard part, the money. That's the moment where you either find out if you have a deal or the other 90% of the time, the moment when the client stops responding to your emails. But Blaine didn't even blink. He was in. The money was settled. The timeline was realistic. Everything was looking good. Except one little detail that we hadn't landed on. What exactly does Blaine want this table to look like? So I asked him for a couple inspiration photos. And when he sent them, I realized that I would rather lose the money than build the table that he wanted. I'm going to explain why in a minute. And I don't know if this upset Blaine, but I know that I'm happy about the decision. And I think you will be too. And while it doesn't feel great to turn down a guaranteed $17,000 check, it was the right move for my sanity. And I actually think it was the smarter financial move too. And I'm going to back that up with some hard numbers. But as of right now, I'm building a custom table that doesn't have a customer. And if that turns out to be a $17,000 mistake, then I've got nobody to blame but myself. All right, let's just build the table. We're going to start with the top, because that's what's going to determine how the base is going to look. And what we have here is a gigantic slab of Claro walnut. So relatively speaking, this piece is kind of short and wide. About 88 inches long and 75 inches here. And I think the technical name for this is a choke. Or actually, I don't know what they call it. But when I first got it, it was like this. And the story there was, I had a client that wanted a 9 foot long table. I found this slab and loved it, even though it was way bigger and more expensive than what I needed. But I took a gamble and overspent on material for that build, knowing that I'd be left with a nice big chunk for another piece. So my first idea was to literally just leave it as is. Build a table like this. And I think this would be cool, but kind of impractical. And since I'm building this on spec, it seems like an extra bad business move to limit my market to the like 5 crypto bros who would even consider buying it. I mean, how was Austin supposed to tell Connor about his new cold plunge from here? Or trauma bond with Tanner over their board ape investment losses? So we're going to do the responsible thing and cut it down to a more appropriate size. For the length, we're going to keep it as long as possible at 84 inches. And for width, right around 40 inches would be pretty standard. But we're going to push that a little wider to 44 inches to help keep that massive slab presence. And here's a little trick. Instead of cutting it out like this, where every edge is perfectly straight, I'm going to leave a little sliver of live edge on this corner. And you can think of this as like the woodworking equivalent of wearing a low cut blouse. Gives people just enough of a peek to realize that this thing came from a massive tree. But it's not so much that HR needs to have a follow up conversation with you about the company dress code on Monday morning. I think I might be mixing my metaphors, but you get my point. Anyway, with the artistic portion of how to cut the slab settled, next I could square up the ends. Now you might have noticed this already, but this slab has a giant crack running right down the middle. And this thing is just like barely hanging on by a thread. So rather than having to deal with two floppy halves whenever I'm trying to move it around, I decided I was just going to give it the push that it was asking for. And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, if anything, this crack should be the slab's cleavage. So I guess that little glimpse of live edge that we left would be more like... side boob? Okay, no more locker room humor, I promise. Now, let's dig into this crack. So I knew about it going in, and my original plan was to do a no-epoxy top. Just kind of brace the two halves together with wood. And then leave the crack exposed. But the more that I thought about it, the more I realized it probably wasn't a good idea on this specific dining table, because it seems like food would fall into it and it would just kind of get nasty over time. I'd say the sweet spot for a crack in a dining table would be maybe smaller than a spoon, but bigger than a... crunch berry. So I'm going to clean all the dirt and bark off of the inside edges, and then I'm going to use epoxy to bring everything back together. Now, on that topic. I don't know if it's most people or just a vocal minority, but it's not rare to read comments like, I'm sick of all these dumb epoxy river tables. And I actually kind of agree. Like, when somebody takes two narrow slabs that don't even really match, and then dumps a lake of epoxy between them, I don't like it. And look, if somebody does, that's fine. We don't all have to agree. That's just my opinion. But to me, what I'm doing here is not a river table. It's just a big slab of wood that happens to have epoxy stabilizing it. If anything, the epoxy here would be more like a tool than a focal point. But anyway, I've been thinking about this. Where is the line for when a slab goes from good to bad? Obviously, it's an opinion. And I also think it's not an exact point. You know, like, less than five inches is good, more than five inches is bad. There's no Crunchberry Mason-Dixon line we can use. But if I had to oversimplify it into just one make-or-break metric, I would ask the question, does it look intentional? And actually, that's true for art across the board. There's no exact point where something becomes good or becomes art. But for most of us, we're more likely to call something art when we see intent. I think the tabletops that Cam from Blacktail makes are a perfect example. I know he has this reputation for being a sort of snarky, smart-ass straight shooter. You know, the kind of guy who'd probably talk about side boob in a video. But the way that he arranges his tops, you can tell that a lot of thought goes into it. It's very intentional. Go give him a follow, by the way. He could use the views. All right, this epoxy is going to need a few days to cure, so let's start building the base. And this seems like a good time to tell you why this deal fell apart to begin with. So when I had asked Blaine for some inspiration photos, he replied saying that he wanted a table that looks exactly like this. Which is a table that I've built for another customer a couple years ago. Now, for most furniture makers, this is the dream scenario. Good customer, good budget, no guesswork because you've already built the piece before. So it's kind of a no-brainer. Just build the thing, get paid, move on. But here's where my situation gets weird. Because I don't have just one customer. I have two. The person buying the table, Blaine. And the person watching the video, you. And if I rebuild the exact same piece that I've already made a video about, then there's no reason for this video to exist. And instead, right now you're doing your fifth rewatch of The Office. So as you already know, I made the arguably very bad business decision to turn down Blaine's job. That way I could build something new and make this video. Now, I know that that sounds stupid. But let me try to explain by telling you about Lamborghinis. This is Ferruccio Lamborghini. Originally, he made tractors. And one day he had some constructive criticism for a guy named Enzo Ferrari. And when Enzo told him to stick to the farm, Ferruccio got so pissed that he decided to pivot from tractors to supercars. Which I guess makes Lamborghini basically the world's most iconic spite store. And I'm sure at the time, people thought he was crazy to pivot away from a successful tractor company. Well, my story isn't quite as dramatic. But 10 years ago, I had a side hustle selling furniture out of my garage. And I had spent years dreaming of getting to the point where somebody would be willing to buy one of my pieces. But after about a year, I found myself stuck in this loop, building the same two pieces over and over. And I wasn't getting rich doing it. And more importantly, I was getting bored. So one day, I made a pivot. And I stopped taking orders and started a YouTube channel instead. And I had no idea where it would go. But I promised myself not to get stuck in that loop again. So turning down a $17,000 job isn't something that I do on a whim. It's me keeping that promise. Now, if I can carefully dismount my high horse, I'll admit it. This is a weird way to run a business. And I don't want it to come across as if I'm like some pretentious craftsman with so much artistic integrity that he refuses to repeat himself. Because that's not the case. The truth is, it's actually the smarter financial move for me. And I'll break down the math later so you don't think I'm just being reckless. All of that said, it really does still bother me. It feels like a gut punch every time I have to tell a great customer no just so I can keep the channel moving forward. And I think I finally have a solution. Before we get into those details though, let's look at the base that I'm building here. So when I started making the top, I didn't really know what I was going to build yet. So I started by just roughing out a few of my ideas. And I pretty quickly gravitated towards these two. But I also really liked this detail with this sort of rounded stretcher piece that protrudes through the leg. So I thought that maybe there was a way I could incorporate that. So from there, I went ahead and made a 3D model of the two designs that I liked at scale. The way I could get a better idea for how they might actually look in the real world as 3D objects. And after a few hours that I spent doing that and then drawing and just thinking about it, here's where I landed. I like both designs and either would work. But the main focal point on this table is going to be the top. And in my opinion, this design works better with a top that looks more light and airy. But this design really works better with that more substantial top. So we're going to aim for something like that one. So what I have here is the material for the two legs. And you've seen me break down the rough boards, mill them to their finished thickness of two inches, and then rip out a couple of pieces that'll become the vertical part of the legs. And then here, I'm cutting out a trapezoidal piece that'll go between the two vertical parts. So I'm basically making two oversized chunky pieces that look like this. Before I actually put anything together, though, I need to make myself a template. Now, thankfully, I can pull all of the crucial dimensions from that digital model that I had created, which makes it really easy to recreate the straight parts of the template. And then the only tough part is that curve. But the good thing here is that a curve is pretty forgiving. It's really one of those situations where if it looks good, it is good. Now, the reason that I make a template instead of shaping the actual workpiece is because it's way faster. Like on this one, 90% of the effort's going to go into smoothing that arc to make it look nice. And most of that work's going to be done with a sander. So it'll probably take me maybe like 15 to 30 minutes on the template. But if I were to try to do that same thing on the two-inch thick walnut, it's just going to take like four times longer. And then the reason that I had stopped progress on building the legs to make the template now is because the first thing that I'm going to use it for is to mark a guideline on my workpiece. That way, when I cut in these dominoes, I can make sure that they end up like this and not accidentally like this where they'd become exposed. All right, the numbers. At the top of the video, I said that I was going to break down why it's actually a smart move for me to turn down a $17,000 table. And to do it, I have to give a peek behind the financial curtain, which for me is slightly uncomfortable. But I want to be transparent about it so that you can see this isn't about being some overly precious artist. It's about the weird math behind the decision. And that math starts with one baseline fact that I hope we can all agree on. Custom furniture is expensive. Way more expensive than furniture you'd buy at a store. If you can imagine a price spectrum, you have one-off custom pieces at the far right and mass-produced pieces on the left. Then in the middle, I can think of two other buckets. And we'll call them production craft furniture. So think like Herman Miller. Legendary designs, great quality, but still relatively high volume. And studio line furniture, which would be low volume and handmade to order. So basically like custom quality, but not a custom design. Then there's the wild card, what I'm doing here. A spec build. And you can think of this like a one-off custom piece, only without a pre-existing customer. Now a spec build could really end up almost anywhere on that price spectrum. And I tend to do about four builds like this per year. And what I've found is that they usually end up selling for about 25% less than a similar custom commission would. So to tie that into hard numbers, instead of being a $17,000 table for Blaine, this one's more likely to end up being a $12,000 table for somebody else. Like Austin. Maybe he'll save a little by hiring a discount ayahuasca shaman for his annual clarity retreat this year and spend the difference here. Anyway, all that is to say, when I quote, turned down $17,000, I actually only turned down $17,000 immediate dollars. And I guess the more accurate truth is that in the long run I'm giving up about $5,000 by skipping that custom job. So for that to not be a complete train wreck of a decision, I have to make that money up elsewhere. And as you've probably guessed, that's the video. AdSense. Sponsorships. Promoting my furniture plans and wood finish. If I didn't make a video, I'd lose out on all of that. So skipping that guaranteed payday from Blaine, but being able to make the video, is the smarter move. And actually that list didn't even include my biggest reason. So my perfect storm is when I get a great client that reaches out wanting something original that I can also make a video on. And the more videos with the more variety that I make, the more often that happens. Anyway, that's why I turned down Blaine's job. And look, it's not a perfect system. Like I said, I hate the fact that I have to turn down great clients like Blaine. And I do think I have an idea to fix it. But before I do that, I should probably fix this. So as you can see there, initially I thought that something went wrong with the bearing on my router bit. But I think what actually happened was I just slightly tipped or lifted the router, and then the bit took a bite out of the leg. And whenever stuff like this happens, you have a decision to make. Stop and try to fix it now, or keep going and fix it later. And I know it sounds kind of counterintuitive, but it's usually better to make the problem worse before you make it better. I can't really think of a great analogy, but maybe like a dentist dealing with a cavity. You know, they don't just dab some filling onto a speck of decay on your tooth. They have to drill it out and make a crater that's 10 times the size of the original problem. That way the repair will actually stick. So that's kind of what we're going to do here. Now the good news is, I still have all of the off cuts from the leg, the pieces I'd cut off at the bandsaw. So I should be able to get a pretty good match as long as I can find the right piece. Oh yeah. And after I did, I made sure to mark it all out so that I can come back to that. And while I finish shaping the leg and try to fix it, I want to give a quick thanks to Notability for sponsoring this video. So based on the name, you can probably guess that Notability is a note-taking app, but I think that's selling them short. I mean, they did start out as a note-taking app, but they've evolved into more of a productivity tool that's pretty much for anybody. And here's a few ways that I use it. So I usually have about five custom furniture jobs going at any time, which means lots of notes and emails and drawings to organize. And it's a situation where if I were to accidentally cut something like two inches short, it would ruin an entire project. But with Notability, everything that I jot down, including handwritten notes on a shop sketch, is completely searchable. Which means in those panicked moments when I'm about to do something that can't be undone, I can very quickly search through my notes to triple check my dimensions and know confidently that I'm using the most recent and correct design that we landed on. Like all this right here, I didn't write that. This was organized for me from my 10 billion notes. Then there's sample 73, my wood finish. We're a team of four now, and I suck at remembering what we talk about in our meetings. But by recording our meetings in the app and using Notability to generate transcripts, summaries, and action items from the recording, I don't have to worry about remembering. I can just be in the moment. We're collaborating with Sean on our woodworking courses. We used to sit two feet apart, but now we live 2,000 miles away. But because we can sync our notes and work on the same documents in real time, I couldn't go to Texas to film this, but I wanted to kind of show it. And you can see whatever I do here, right there, that saved me a plane ticket. Kind of brings back that same synergy that we had when we were in the same room. So you can actually try Notability for free. And if you use my promo code, you'll get a 25% discount on a personal subscription, or you can buy a license for your entire business. Hit the link in the description to learn more. And thanks again, Notability, for sponsoring this video. Now about that fix. I think this is going to turn out nicely. I don't actually know yet, but I'm going to edit in a clip here so we can see the finished results and you can judge my work. All right. The epoxy is good and cured now, so we can get back to work on the top. Now I've been really liking to use this plastic drop cloth instead of building a more normal form for a few reasons. And one of them is because you can keep reusing it. So that's why you see me trying to carefully remove the slab without snagging the plastic on any sharp corners here. And I failed. Okay, so from here, we're going to get the slab up on the CNC and run a couple of flattening passes on each face. And by the time I do that, this slab should still be right around two inches thick. And in this shot, you can actually see that the slab is slightly cupped at this point. But after we flatten the first side and then flip it over, now here you can see in this shot that it's flat up against the table. So now after we flatten this side, everything will be good to go. Now, whenever you do this, you're going to end up exposing lots of new cracks or just spots that epoxy never got to for whatever reason. So now I need to do a touch-up pour. And on this one, there was one particular crack on the end that was pretty big. So we're going to get that dammed up and then do another pour of the thick set, which means that it's going to need to cure now for another week. But look at the bright side. Here's a time-lapse of bubbles naturally coming to the surface and popping. Fun. So earlier I had explained why turning down Blaine's job is just the reality of how my business works. I design something, build it once, make a video about it, and move on, rarely if ever building it again. And from a YouTube point of view, it makes perfect sense. And even from a my happiness point of view, but from a practical point of view, squandering all the work that goes into making that first version of a piece kind of seems like a massive waste. So I am pleased to announce that I am partnering with IKEA and that all of my designs, my entire bat catalog, will be available at all 973 IKEA locations starting this April. I'm just kidding. That's not happening. You didn't really believe that, right? I even made up that 973 locations thing. Let's see. Over 500. Okay, I guess 973 is technically true then. But anyway, here's the real idea. Or I guess question. And I'm going to want your feedback on this one. So about nine months ago, I moved my shop into this new space that I share with my buddy Joel. And Joel runs a more normal custom furniture business. And we were thinking, what if we took a few of my more requested designs and I worked with Joel and his crew to build them upon request? I think it's a pretty obvious idea. So I guess my question is, is it a good idea or a bad idea? Now feel free to let me know in the comments. I'm pretty good about reading them even if I can't reply to all of them. But if you really want to let me know and help me out, I'm going to make a form with a couple questions and a place for your feedback because I think I'll just learn a lot more a lot faster that way. But the basic idea kind of goes back to that spectrum. The studio line column here. Pick a couple pieces, have them available in a couple sizes and a couple species of wood for a price that's not cheap by any means but less than custom. And for the people who want a custom piece, I can carry on as usual with that. But anyway, before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to see what the feedback is. So I'm just going to leave it right there for now and get back to talking about this table. So you just saw me cut a couple roundovers on the legs. I did a full roundover along the inside curve and then a thumbnail profile along the outside edges. And then we cut out the three stretcher pieces that will eventually go like this. And for now, these are cut to their final width and thickness, but they're still a few inches long. So the next thing I have to do is cut a roundover along one side of each of these pieces. And normally whenever you cut a roundover, it's 100% visual. Like on the legs, I was going for a certain look, but it doesn't have to be a perfect measurement. You just kind of do what looks good and then I can sand it and clean it all up and I'm not worried if the geometry changes a little bit. It doesn't really matter. But these are actually going to be functional roundovers. So I'm going to sand these a bit to clean them up and then I'm going to make a couple more templates that are basically the negative of the stretchers. Now, instead of using these templates directly on the legs, once I know that they're fitting good, I'm actually going to use them to modify my original leg template. And then I'll use that on my leg. And this will make it so that instead of having to measure out and position three different mortises on each leg, hoping that they all line up, I can just position the template on each leg once, cut everything in, and it'll be good to go. And this is why you don't want a nice workbench. Actually, that's not fair. It's fine to have a fancy, nice workbench, but you should also have at least one sh** worktable so that you can do stuff like that and not care. It's me again. I did that little count in there because sometimes it can startle people when my voice pops back in after a moment of silence. And I'm a gentleman. So, didn't want to just thrust it back in there without a warning. Anyway, I'm pretty sure you already understand what I'm doing here. So it got me wondering, what are we doing here? We're going on what? Almost 24 minutes together now? That's a long time to spend with someone without any labels. And look, I'm getting to a point in my life where I'm not just looking for a quick view. I want to build a deep, long-lasting relationship. What I'm trying to say is, get subscribed, and go ahead and give the video a like while you're at it. Thanks, baby. All right, where were we? Oh, yeah. So we got our notches cut into the legs to accept the bottom and top stretchers. And now we need to do almost the exact same thing for these pieces. So I'm going to mill that wood so that it's the exact same width as the template piece that I'd already made. Then I'm going to cut the exact same size roundover along two edges. That way I can use this same template again when I'm cutting in the notches for these pieces. Then I need to finalize the length of my two long stretcher pieces. That way I can cut the notches in with one at the center and then another that's 26 inches center to center on either side. Question. That last part was a little bit technical, right? Did you understand it? And be honest, will you ever actually put it to use? So I'm hoping that the answer to the first one is yes. But for the second question, whether it's yes, no, or I don't even own a screwdriver, it doesn't really matter. And it's funny because YouTube gives us all these data points about who you are, but the one thing that I wish they could tell me is does woodworking? And I would guess that the breakdown would look something like 2% yes, 48% might someday, and 50% was watching a guy restore a rusty meat slicer from the 1940s and somehow ended up here. But I feel like that's the data point that would actually shape how I make a video. Like, my goal whenever I'm trying to explain things is to do it in a way where Emily understands what I'm doing and why, even if she doesn't necessarily understand how from a technical perspective, while at the same time trying to make sure that Warwick can pick up some inspiration or a couple tricks that he can use in his own shop. I feel like if I can somehow walk that line, I have a good chance of making both of those groups happy. As for the meat slicer people though, I don't know. I guess I'm just glad they found me. It does make me wonder though, what entertainment niche am I filling? Like, if they'd been born 15 years earlier in a pre-YouTube era, what would they be watching instead? Maybe like, How It's Made on Discovery Channel? I mean, when you think about it, it does kind of scratch that same itch. The weird part though, is that How It's Made totally leaned into the technical side of things. They presented it like everybody watching was going to turn it off at the commercial and head out to their 40,000 square foot industrial facility to start mass producing marbles or artificial limbs or whatever. But I feel pretty confident that that actually happened maybe zero times. I don't think anybody was hitting pause in a moment of inspiration to yell out, Honey! Move the tourists out of the garage! We're making bowling balls tonight! Or maybe they did. Who knows? Alright, so we have all our pieces cut to length and here you can see I've started assembling things. Now this should be a really strong joint, but just to reinforce it and make sure we're not completely relying on the glue, I'm inserting four dowels that are going to go through the bottom stretcher and into the leg at each joint. And now by doing that, it would take a ton of pressure to get any movement in the joint this way or any twisting. So while that glue is drying, I'm going to assemble all of the top stretchers like this and after they're both dry, then we can put it all together. But before I do that, while these are still loose pieces, I need to cut three mortises into each one and this is going to be where all the hardware goes to eventually attach the top to the base. And normally I use my drill press and the idea is that you cut a large shallow recess and then a slightly smaller hole that goes all the way through and this lets you use a bolt and washer to attach the top but still allows for the top to expand and contract without breaking anything apart. Well, I wanted to try something different this time so I set up a file on my CNC to cut them and the irony is that by the time that I did all this and warmed things up, I'm not really sure that I saved any time. Now you saw when I assembled that first joint, I was really worried about all the glue squeezing out so I put blue tape everywhere. Well, for the rest of the joints, I got a little bit wiser and I realized that if I flip the order, I can skip that step. Basically, I'll just get my pieces lined up where they're supposed to go, mark everything out and pre-drill my dowel holes. Then I can use a lot less glue and do it all at one time. Plus an added benefit, after I drill the holes, the piece kind of looks like a Shy Guy from Mario or maybe Beaker from The Muppets with a belly button. All right, buddy, time to go face down in your notch. But look at how much less glue I'm able to use here. The second round of epoxy touch-up is cured and now I need to scrape off all of that excess from the surface which sounds really annoying so let me go ahead and turn that down for you. Then from there, I need to take it to go get wide belt sanded which I didn't film this time and now it's decision time. We need to figure out what to do about this. So this light strip is called sapwood and Clara Walnut slabs are notorious for having these bug holes in the sapwood and a good general rule of thumb is wherever there's one, there are usually a bunch more. They're basically like chambers that are running through the entire thing. Now the good news is most of the time it doesn't really matter because when you make a top, the sapwood ends up at the center like this and it can actually look really pretty. The problem is here it's going to be on the outside live edge. So I have two options. I can carve the entire edge back following the grain right along this dark line which won't look as natural or I can try to save the edge and just deal with the holes. And I'm going to go with option two because worst case scenario, I can start there and pivot but you can't really un-toast a piece of bread. So I started by just grinding away at the edge following the natural flow until hopefully I would hit a sweet spot where there aren't any huge chambers being exposed. And this is looking pretty good. For the most part, these are pretty small and the wood feels solid. Like if I poke at it, it doesn't feel like there's any hidden hollow spots that are just below the surface. So I'm going to fill this in with some of the faster curing epoxy. That way the next day, I can finish sanding the edges. And you can see here in this shot that a couple of these worm hold their way right up to the surface of the slab. All right, so we're mostly looking good here. I'm going to give the epoxy one more shot to get the remaining small cracks and holes. But then I need to figure out what to do about this. This is really the main... I don't know if blemish is the right word. Maybe just the main spot that I'm worried about. I think filling this part with black epoxy is just going to stand out like a sore thumb. So I need to really think about what I want to do here. And I decided while I was thinking about it, I'd build a quick little fun side project. Here, I'll show you the finished piece and you can guess what you think it is before I tell you. Pause and comment with what you think it is. Okay, so it's for my wife's desk. For these, which I call her in-progress piles. So I thought it'd be nice to build her something that lets her maintain whatever efficiency all those piles give her. But that's maybe a little bit less of an eyesore. And I know building a file organizer that goes on top of a filing cabinet has real belt and suspender vibes. But hey, whatever keeps your pants on, right? And even though I'm not eligible to win, this is my official entry into the new challenge that I'm hosting with Rockler called the Small Space Challenge. Where the goal is to make something small that has a big impact. So that could be building something that's for that little nook between your couch and wall, a corner of your desk, pretty much however you want to interpret it, if I'm being honest. So if you have an idea for something small you can build, participate. Just like with the past challenges I've done, Rockler's on board again. And they're giving away some really great prizes, including a $2,500 gift card for first place. And to enter, all you have to do is build something and post your project on Instagram using the hashtag Rockler Small Space Challenge. And you have until the end of June to submit. So I really want this to be open to everybody's creativity. Not a huge stickler for rules. And honestly, I'd just rather see cool projects than trying to disqualify people for not following some strict guidelines. But if you want to read the rules, I'm going to paste them down in the description. Or if you're watching this on a TV, you can just scan this QR code to learn more. And please don't feel like you need to be a master craftsman to join in. Just do your best and take comfort in the fact that the idea is the most important thing. Execution and skill, all those things don't matter. But the idea is first, and that stuff is second. At least in my mind. And I'm the one judging, so. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you guys build. The past ones have been great, and I think this is going to be another fun one. So I decided I'm going to patch this. But you can see that this hole goes really deep. So before I cut into it, I wanted to stabilize it with some more epoxy. And I figured while that was curing, it'd be a good opportunity to test a new technique that I think might be easier and nicer looking than what I've done in the past. So this is definitely going to be overkill. But right now you can see those dowels on the base. And obviously once the top's on, you wouldn't be able to see them. But I figured this would be an extra nice touch and again, good practice. So I use the shaper origin to cut in a shallow recess. And then I squared everything up with a chisel. And now here's the trick. In the past, whenever I would cut the patches, I'd aim to cut them just ever so slightly smaller than the recess. And if you nail it, it comes out really great. But that's easier said than done. So instead I'm going to tilt my table saw's blade to about five degrees and aim to cut the patches so that they're just slightly smaller than the recess here, but slightly larger than the recess here, tapered on all four sides. And the idea is that they'll wedge themselves in and create a perfect fit. And being the impatient person that I am, after getting those testers in, rather than waiting for it to dry so I could actually sand them back to see what the results look like, I just went ahead and started doing the same thing on the top. So other than that big one, the other problem spots are pretty small. And that's actually kind of the problem. Too small for epoxy to get into. And filling stuff like this with CA glue, it works. But I don't know. I never really liked the look. Honestly, with stuff like this, if this piece were for a client, my recommendation would be patch it if you like the look of that. And I do, but it's personal preference. Or if you don't like it, just leave them as is. And if they insisted on CA glue, I would do it, but that's my professional opinion. So I always keep these small slab offcuts laying around for this reason. And that one on the edge is going to be the toughest one because I need to make sure that I use a sapwood portion of this offcut. And there's no way that this was going to end up being invisible. So think of it more like a well-executed fix for a problem. Like there's this Japanese mending technique called sashiko, where the idea would be if you had a rip in a pair of jeans, instead of trying to stitch it back together and pretend that the damage never existed, you stitch a patch over it that has contrasting thread and patterns. So now the fix looks intentional and it becomes more of a feature than a flaw. If you're wondering why I know this, it's because I really love sneakers. And one of my favorite pairs are these Jordan 4s, which are called, you guessed it, sashiko. So the other day I'm heading into the shop. And as I pass by a KFC, I notice this giant banner that says, made the hard way, made by hand. And it made me think, we really do romanticize the struggle. Like the more inconvenient something was to make, the more we assume it must be good. Why? Is it because effort feels like proof something is more real? More valuable? Like if I had flattened this slab by hand, instead of using my CNC, would that make the table any better? What if at the start of each workday, I sprinkled a few wood chips into my shoes, so it was just a little more uncomfortable all day. And every now and then I'd get a splinter right into the arch of my foot. Would that make somebody want to pay more for the table? And weirdly, I think there's a kernel of truth there. I mean, not the wood chip thing. And even the hand plane versus CNC thing's probably a little bit too granular for most people to care. But I think if you zoom out all the way and ask, is this table more valuable because a person made it, than it would be if it were made by a fully automated factory, even if the outcome looked exactly the same? I think the answer is yes. But I don't think it's because we romanticize the struggle. I think it's because of what made by hand implies. And in the case of furniture, it implies things like rarity and uniqueness, judgment. It implies that a real person made decisions along the way, and that there probably aren't hundreds of identical copies of this thing out there in the world. And with a piece of furniture, that can be a value add. But what about with a phone? Do you want your phone to be handmade and rare? Probably not. I want my phone to be one of a hundred million. I really just want it to work. What about a car? If it's an AMG Mercedes, then yeah, that little plaque on the engine makes it feel more special. But if it's a Camry, same as the phone, I want that thing put together on the most efficient assembly line on earth. So I guess it's another spectrum. On one end, you have something like a microchip, where being handmade reduces the value to zero because it could literally ruin the object. And then on the other end, you have something like an oil painting, where the entire value of the object is based on the fact that it's handmade. And I don't know about you, but when I'm getting fast food chicken, bespoke drumsticks are pretty low on my list of priorities. In short, KFC, do better. So you just saw me cut in that bow tie. And if you're not familiar with these, the purpose is to keep that crack from being able to expand over time. And if you are familiar with these, you might have noticed that I made this one extremely thick. And that's because I knew I was going to cut a large round over into the bottom edge of the table, which means a good amount of it's going to go away. And I wasn't exactly sure how much, so I wanted to just give myself plenty of real estate. Then after I do that, I'm going to get my threaded inserts installed. And then I can get some finish on and put everything together. And on that note, since I've already been pretty transparent about business stuff in this video, here's one more for you. About a year and a half ago, I started selling Sample73, and I am not getting rich off this stuff. Put it this way, I think I make more profit selling a single dining table than I've made in the first 18 months of selling finish. So if I didn't believe in this stuff, I'd stop. So if you use wood finish and you've been wanting to try a new one, do me a huge favor and check it out. And I know 95% of you probably couldn't care less about my finish. So if you want to skip ahead to the beauty shots, it's where this bar ends. But for the other 5% of you, people always ask me what makes it better than other products. So here it is. One, protection. If Sample73 wasn't as protective as direct competitors already on the market, then there wouldn't really have been any point in making it. Two, application. Our hard wax is micronized instead of emulsified. And what it means for you is that we can use more wax while still keeping the finish fluid enough to work into tight corners. Three, the bottle. I was sick of wasting product. So first, we give you a true 3 to 1 ratio of finish and accelerator. And you get more total finish than what you'd get from a standard can in a bottle where you can actually get all the product out of it. Plus, it's really easy to reseal with a cap so you don't have to worry about it curing in the container. Four, the results. Everything that I just said would mean absolutely nothing if the results weren't great. But they are. And look, obviously I'm going to be biased, but I genuinely believe we have the best overall package on the market. Ease of use, protection, the final look, the final feel. It matches or beats the top players across the board. And honestly, here's the best recommendation that I can possibly give it. When I sell a table, Sample73 is the finish that I use. If I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't do that. Period. End of story. So give it a try. Let's take a look at some beauty shots of this custom table without a customer. So I actually brought this idea up with Dolores, remember the girl with the messy desk, to keep this table and refinish our current dining table and put that up for sale instead. Because I really, really, really like this table. Like a lot. That said, I'm not going to do it because our current one is a better shape for our dining room, which is long and skinny. So even though I think this table is nicer and prettier, I'm putting it up for sale. And here's the thing that I've really noticed now with spec builds. Going into it, it's always pretty exciting. The creative freedom, building something new and different. It's great. But somewhere in the middle or near the end, that excitement turns into uncertainty. Because now you've got thousands of dollars in materials and a bunch of your time tied up into a piece that you're really just hoping somebody will see, love, and decide to buy. And when you compare that to a guaranteed $17,000 for repeating a build, it can start to feel like a pretty dumb decision. But you know what? I've been doing this for 10 years now. And my entire career is basically built on decisions that looked dumb in the short term. So I'm fine with that trade. I guess I don't really mind leaving a little money on the table. As long as it means being excited about the actual table that I'm leaving it on. So, thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.