Removing Water Stains

The slats have all been fit on Dining Table No. 1. After having steamed and twisted the 66 white oak slats they had a lot of water stains on the slats. The water stains were on the slats when they came out of the steam box, I can't say for sure why but my hunch is I didn't have them spaced out enough and/or condensation was dripping down onto the slats throughout the steaming process. In most cases I wouldn't worry to much about it, just scrape and sand until clear. However the design called for the outside face of the slats to have  a bandsawn texture, this meant I was going to have to find another way of removing the water stains.

Some internet searching led me to find an organic compound solution, oxalic acid, which is a poison found in rhubarb. I ended up in what I can only best describe as a mad laboratory studio in the east end of Toronto where I purchased a 100g of the powder. Mixed roughly 10 parts water to 1 part Oxalic Acid I began scrubbing away at the stains with a wire brush. The test proved semi successful, although the stains were mostly gone the colour in the wood went with it leaving a sort of washed out dirty bleached look. It was undesirable for the finish I was looking to attain and meant going back to the drawing board.

With no real explanation as to why I thought it would work I decided to try and steam the stains out (last resort). Armed with my second hand iron and a wet clean rag I began steaming the water stained spots. Much to my disbelief the stains were lifting right out of the wood and actually transferring onto the rag. Some of the darkest spots took a couple tries but in the end I was left with clean (and wrinkle free) slats. I prepped them for finish by using the wire brush in line with the bandsaw marks to clean the slats and sanded a small chamfer on the edges. Few coats of wipe-on-poly later and I couldn't be happier. As much as I had fun with my brief organic compound trial, I am thrilled that steam was the solution. Be it bending, twisting, fixing dents or removing water stains, steam is the trick.

Magical Metal Work

After a bit of a delay we're back on to the metal dining table with the twisted white oak slats. I know there have already been pictures of the twisted slats and a video of us "getting our twist on,"  but we're going to take a step back on this post. Below are pictures of the metal frame I had fabricated which will hold (frame) 66 twisted white oak slats. In order for the frame to properly hold the twisted wood slats it also requires the metal angle iron to twist from acute to obtuse back to acute, or vice-versa. This is also happening along a curve, two curves actually.

So, in order to ensure as much accuracy as possible (we're kind of out in space after all) I not only provided a full scale drawing but also made jigs/forms for my metal worker to fabricate the curved twisting angle iron. You can see the angle blocks change from acute to obtuse along the curve, he used these to clamp a strip of cold rolled steel along, and then butt a curved section up to it tacking it along the way. The result was fabricating curved angle iron that changes from acute to obtuse back to acute, or vice-versa.

There is also a twisted straight section where the angle iron changes from acute to obtuse down the length, no curves, these pieces will make up the triangular ends.

A lot of head scratching went on with this one, at this point I still had no idea just how the wood slats were going to get fit and attached to the frame. There was also the dilemma of not actually knowing if the piece would be sturdy enough to hold a large piece of glass, but its working in the world of unknown that keeps this exciting.