All About Oak

I grew up surrounded by oak. Not oak trees, oak. My dad has an affinity for the wood, and it has taken me some time to get past the visions of honey stained oak with cathedral grain patterns - ala the 1970's -  that filled our house. Recently, I have come appreciate it's beauty and practicality. (And my dad has branched out to appreciate different woods.)

Red Oak, Quartersawn

Red Oak, Plainsawn

Red Oak, End Grain

Oak is a tough, strong wood. It is the workhorse of domestic woods, known for both it's strength and beauty. Oak's wide availability and low prices makes it suitable for a wide range of products. If you can make it out of wood, you can probably make it out of oak.

Craftsman style coffee table in oak.

The grain pattern of oak varies depending on how it is cut. Plainsawn wood gives you the flared "cathedral" grain, while quartersawn gives you a tight grain pattern with a flake pattern that is sometimes called tiger rays. Oak generally has a coarse texture with pronounced grain and color variation. It also has a high tannin content, making it a good candidate for the ebonizing process. Ebonization gives the wood a pitch black finish.

Oak is the most popular wood for furniture, followed by cherry, pine, mahogany, ash, pecan, hard maple, & walnut. It was the wood of choice during the Arts and Crafts movement, and is still used extensively in Craftsman and Mission style pieces.

To me, oak has more of an earthy feel than any other wood. That's in part because of it's color, but also because the grain pattern is so pronounced. Maybe that is what my father saw in it.

Joint of the Week: Butterfly Key

George Nakashima often used butterfly joints to stabalize the massive slabs of wood that he used in his work. They can be used either to hold two or more wooden slabs together or to keep two halves that have already started to split from splitting further. When done properly, a butterfly key will actually draw the crack together and inhibit further movement of the crack.

 A butterfly key looks like two dovetails joined at the narrow end. The then negative is cut from the board and the butterfly is fitted in.

The key is often made of contrasting wood as in Nakashima's work, but it was also used for repairing cracks as early as the 18th century, when the butterfly was hidden on the underside to stabalize a crack.

George Nakashima

Leveled slab from an oak tree in our yard.

Paul has started work on what is going to be a beautiful showpiece. It is made from slabs that we cut from an oak tree that we had to take down in our yard. He is keeping the live edge in the style of George Nakashima.

George Nakashima was a Japanese-American woodworker who was one of the innovators of the American Craft Movement of the mid-20th century. Born in Washington state, he traveled extensively, living in France, North Africa, India, and Japan. He mastered traditional Japanese hand tools and joinery techniques. Nakashima’s signature woodworking design was his large-scale tables made of large wood slabs with smooth tops and unfinished natural edges.

Conoid Dining Table - George Nakashima

Nakashima explored the organic expressiveness of wood and instinctively knew exactly what the wood was asking to reveal. Instead of forcing a piece of wood to be a square board, he yielded to its natural form whenever possible. He admired the complexity in the grain of older trees that only evolved with time. When you realize how long these trees have lived, it places you in a kind of un-established position. Rather than looking at nature as something to be conquered, you begin to feel the humility of being in the presence of something that has been on this earth longer than any one man could dream to be.

Conoid Bench - George Nakashima

In today’s age of big box stores and mass produced goods, too few of us stop to think about what goes into the products that we buy. Much of it is wood chips that are pressed into a particular shape, leaving no reference of the tree behind.