When a slab like this one comes through the door of our workshop, it’s pretty clear what our job is: get out of the way. And that’s not just because it was fully fourteen feet by four – it’s because when we see a live-edge slab as beautifully figured as this one, we want to make sure that the wood speaks for itself. Bubinga, the species of wood in this twelve-foot dining table, is prized and renowned for the figure – that is, those light and dark patterns on its face, which reflect light in different and striking ways – often seen in the wood. 

For this table, and in the interest of letting the wood speak for itself, the clients decided on a very clean-looking style of steel “X-base” with a wood beam running through the center of each leg. Historically, on big tables like this one, with heavy, live-edge slabs, one of the risks inherent in using multiple independent bases is “racking,” or leaning. Our bases and legs obviate this problem, but we’ll often build a square wooden beam like this one, that matches the tabletop and passes through each base, as an aesthetic homage to the solutions of the past.