6 Live Edge Wood Project Ideas For Your Home
Excerpt from Woodworker’s Guide to Live Edge Slabs by George Vondriska
Many woodworking projects call for material that’s been highly processed: typically planks of wood cut to a specific thickness and width. The project dictates the material used, and how it should be used. Working with live edge slabs is different. Instead of the project dictating the material, a slab tells me what project it should best be used for. I love this. A live edge slab is still, in large part, the tree it came from. The edges are irregular, bark may still be attached, it may have knots, bug holes or splits. On conventional woodworking projects I generally cut around those “defects.” On live edge slab projects, I embrace and highlight them. The projects I create with slabs look and feel like they’re still a part of the tree. This makes working with slabs so much fun! Every live edge slab I touch is a little different from the last, and the discovery process is part of the fun.
Below you will find 6 projects from my new book, Woodworker’s Guide to Live Edge Slabs. This guide provides you with the woodworking techniques you need to start working with live edge slabs, along with a number of projects you can use as a jumping off point. I want this book to give you the excitement I feel each time I see a slab, along with the wonder of “What does that slab want to become?” – George Vondriska
Woodworker's Guide to LIve Edge Slabs
Make One-of-a-Kind Woodworking Projects
The first-ever accessible guide on making DIY furniture from live-edge slabs, this book will show you everything you need to know about incorporating organic, natural wood pieces into your home. After learning techniques for milling, drying, and preparing your own slab, adding inlays, using resin and epoxy, creating waterfall edges, and more, you’ll then move on to complete seven projects that range in size and design.
– An approachable how-to
guide on creating live edge home accents and furniture
• Features detailed sections
on techniques to know before you begin
• Includes 8 projects that vary in size and scale
• Offers additional
ideas and inspiration
to implement in your
own projects
6 Live Edge Woodworking Projects
LIve Edge Cutting Board
If you have smaller live edge pieces around — maybe
something you milled yourself — a charcuterie board could
be the perfect project for those slabs. Or, use a larger slab
and get multiple boards out of it, as was done here. In
addition to working with a live edge slab, this project from Woodworker’s Guide to Live Edge Slabs covers
shop-made hand holds in the board and epoxy accents.
Bookmatched Live Edge Dining Table
Industrial-style metal legs are the perfect match for a live-edge slab. These reproduction legs, made from aluminum, are lighter (and less expensive) than true antiques. When you have access to sequentially cut slabs (pieces that were adjacent to each other in the tree), you can create this bookmatched project. Like the pages of an open book, bookmatching provides two or more pieces with mirror image grain.
Magentic Knife Block
This project uses smaller live edge pieces and will be a
great addition to any kitchen. It shows off your nice cutlery
and people will be mystified by the knives magically sticking
to the board. You can make the knife block so it sits on a
countertop or gets used as a wall mount. Both approaches
are shown.Woodcarving Illustrated Magazine, Spring 2016.
Deer track live edge Bench
Friends of mine recently bought a summer cabin, and I
wanted to make them a cabin-warming gift. I knew they
needed a mud room bench, and this project was born.
Waterfall edges and deer track inlays make it truly unique.
STEEL PIPE LIVE EDGE SHELF
A narrow slab, cut into sections, makes great stock for a shelving unit. Combine live edge pieces with readily available steel pipe to get a functional piece of furniture with an industrial twist. Making a set of shelves requires a slab that’s long and relatively narrow, or a slab that’s wide
enough for you to cut the shelves from it, providing
the width you need.
Walnut Cookie LIve Edge CofFEe Table
A log cookie makes a good-sized side table, with a great story to tell to boot. Log cookies are cross sections cut from a log. Cookies may also be referred to as rounds or log coins. Growth rings are obvious in cookies, and they tell the tree’s story. It’s fun to count the growth rings and determine what was happening in history, or within your family, during the different phases of the tree’s life. Log cookies also display heartwood and sapwood which, in many woods, are different
colors and add visual interest to a project.
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