The Most Expensive Wood Slabs to Date

hey this is cam with black death studio and this week i'm going to take you through the buying process of the most expensive slabs i have ever purchased and this is not the most expensive by a little bit this is by far the most i've ever spent on slabs for a single table also this is not an advertisement for gobi walnut i paid retail for these slabs just like you would but my client was on the east coast and we needed to find some slabs without him having to fly out here to look at them so i got on goby's website showed him gobi's website we kind of went back and forth i'll show you the ones we landed on here in a little bit but first i wanted to show you how you can search by size length price species anything you want it's really actually a pretty good website for a small business you can see there i went to the 51 inches and wider and then sorted high to low there was one slab there that i clicked on just for fun because it was 20 000 and this is not the slab i end up buying mine was way way cheaper i just wanted to show you the most expensive slab you can buy at gobi walnut is 21 000 crazy my client and i found one series of slabs from one tree that really really stood out versus all the other slabs that we found they were a bastone walnut tree and we needed two slabs to make this one table and i'll show you kind of a rendering of what this table might look like at the end but we needed two slabs and so i had aaron at goby walnut pull out these seven slabs to see which ones we liked most and you can see two of them had a really big crack down the middle so much so that they were essentially two separate slabs and those were my original idea because the client came to me looking for an epoxy table and we kind of gravitated away from that you can see there we didn't love these ones they had that big bark inclusion that would end up having to be filled with epoxy those big cracks i think they're cool but you can't really tell that it's such a big wide individual slab so we didn't love these and i had a facetime session while i was looking at these with him to kind of go over this step by step something to take note of is right when the tree is cut it's a lot prettier than it is after it kind of hardens up and gets this what they call scale on it and so these might not look that impressive to you i've seen enough of these slabs and enough of this wood to know what is really really nice wood and these are actually incredible if you know what if you do woodworking you can probably see it too if you don't do woodworking you are probably thinking i am crazy for spending this amount of money on these slabs but you can really see that color starting to come through there you're gonna have to ignore a lot of the dirt and kind of water stains on it that lighter sap wood up at the top that's something really important to take note of and really you just need to look past kind of the superficial things there is the date that it was cut which is really useful and that's the series in the slab that was the 12th slab of this tree this is the same date kind of a serial number and then the 13th slab so you know those ones are a book match and they were right next to each other in the tree that v shape is called the crotch of the tree and that is where you will almost always get a ton of figuring and these slabs are no exception they have tons of color tons of figure they are going to be absolutely beautiful especially up near that v near that crotch this one down at the end it had a ton of water stains which is not a big deal at all all that stuff's going to go away when you surface it but it is kind of hard to look past because this one looks just like a big dirty slab you don't get to see that color you don't get to see that figure so i am relying some on the slab next to it for the figuring but what i did like about this one is it was almost a perfect match for 13. it had almost an identical crack you can see down there that's just water staining those dark marks you just need to be able to look past kind of those superficial aspects and see if the wood is going to be as pretty as you hope it is and sometimes you even need to sand off some of that but i can tell from this and the other slabs that it is absolutely remarkable since i was spending so much money on these slabs i wanted to get a few questions answered and this is aaron he calls himself the vice president of gobi walnut but he's really the owner and he knows a ton about wood and i actually have a really really interesting segment with him at the end of this video where i ask him a bunch of questions about what a fair price for wood is why are these slabs so expensive and does he feel bad cutting big trees down like this i will show you the price of these slabs in just a little bit but first i want to show you the ones that i purchased and these were slabs 13 and 14 and it was pretty clear that 12 13 and 14 were the best slabs they had kind of the smallest cracks the most color the most figure 13 and 14 just were the best match for each other and since this will be a book match table i wanted them to be as close as possible to each other some of you might have noticed that there's no live edge on these slabs and they are over 60 inches wide how is that possible and here is how it is possible this came from a tree that was about nine feet wide so i'll have erin explain at the end of the video why specifically there was no live edge on these but just for scale this is what the tree looked like when it was standing pretty remarkable and speaking of remarkable trees this is one they have in there right now this was rumored to be the largest walnut tree in north america or maybe the world it had a diameter of over 12 feet they have a 13 foot cookie they've cut off of it this is two halves to the same tree they had to sought in half just to get it on a truck so this thing is incredible they're setting up a special mill right now just to cut this one log up because their existing mill can't cut anything near this big so i'm really excited to see what these slabs look like again potentially the biggest walnut tree in north america so these slabs will not be dry until january of 2022 so we are a long ways out but here is the basic idea that my client has is he wants two tables that form a single table that can potentially be pulled apart and i wanted legs that looked like they were designed together so they didn't look like two individual table bases so i messaged alex at flowy line told him my idea told him the size that we're gonna use and here's what he came up with in about five minutes i think it's really cool these designs he's come up with already we're gonna have a lot of back and forth i'm sure before we land on design that the client likes as much as i do but that is the kind of the direction we are going also i wanted to show you kind of a basic very nice pretty brown walnut slab for comparison just so you can see why these slabs are so much money and this again was a very expensive one this is the one we purchased and you can see it is a far cry from that plain old brown one and you might like the brown one better but this is incredible to me i think this is so much prettier it's going to be just an explosion of color figure unlike any slap i've ever seen you can get on goby's website and you will not find any other slabs like this aside from these ones from this one individual individual tree and again there's just another plain brown slab that cost 6 600 and if you didn't see it these slabs were 66 and i believe 6 300 so almost 13 dollars for these two slabs but i think it's worth it the client thinks it's worth it and i am pretty excited to get started one of the questions i get all the time is where do you find clients that will spend ten thousand dollars on a table or thirty thousand dollars in this case and they generally find me through my website i believe this guy actually found me through youtube which i think is pretty cool and he's a contractor and here is one of the houses he built and this might be the most beautiful house i've ever seen and it is only 15 million first off i want to apologize so i'm going to start saving now hopefully it's still for sale by the time i get there here is another house he built that is 25 million dollars the nice thing about working with a contractor at this level though is he knows what it's going to cost to get something perfect he understands the cost of materials so he has actually been really cool to work with so far first off i want to apologize about the lack of videos the last few weeks it has been a crazy transition moving into my new shop i'm basically working by myself around the clock just trying to get the shop functional i've done new electrical which actually had some help from my brother-in-law on but i'm adding ducting we already did an addition to the shop where we have a attached space for the dust collector and air compressor lots of cool new tools i even have a new shop heater that is electric powered that heats the entire shop so really cool stuff and if you can stick with me for a few more weeks i promise i'll be back on my regular rotation of a new video every single thursday if you missed it earlier the total cost of these slabs is twelve thousand nine hundred dollars the total cost of the table to the client is going to be 32 000 that includes the base everything complete just does not include shipping and i know when things are this expensive there's gonna be a lot of questions especially about the wood like you know why are these slabs so expensive how old was this tree are you a complete idiot for spending that much on wood lots of great questions like that so i wanted to have aaron the owner of gobi walnut get ahead of some of these questions and take a couple of minutes to answer all the questions i could think to ask if there's anything i left out be sure to ask me in the comments and i talked to aaron pretty regularly and we can get those questions answered for you down in the comments below my name is aaron i'm the vice president here at gobi walnut portland oregon though this was a bastille walnut tree and it was seven feet wide at the waist and it went up to about 12 feet to the crotch which is the split in the tree i think some of the branches on it were almost 40 inches wide too so pretty big tree there's no live edge on these slabs because our sock can only cut 65 inches wide and this tree was seven feet wide at the narrow point so we had to rip it down with the chainsaw just to fit it in to the mill so basically the entire outside of it was kind of like this big uh cube so does that mean i don't have to pay for the wasted wood uh yes actually we don't charge you for what we cut off all right so yeah do i feel bad cutting down an old bay tree i think a lot of it depends on the tree most often these trees are dead and dying and so they're going to come down anyways i think in that instance it's it's hard to see the tree come down and it is sad um even though it has to come down um it's it's harder when the tree is totally healthy and somebody is just tired of it and wants to take it down um was it witness three down or died this tree was dying yeah how long did he three lift um so compared to soft woods hardwoods like walnut and white oak and maple actually don't live as long here in the willamette valley because the amount of moisture so it will have up to maybe 150 years at the most most of them like a mature walnut tree here is about 80 years old how old do you think your tree was uh this tree was probably over 100 years maybe between 100 and 120 years uh so this slab per board foot was about 40 on big really big oversized pieces will charge anywhere from 30 to maybe 45 or 50 bucks a board foot depending on the width and the length the reason we charge that much one it takes an extremely long period of time to dry this material typically one year per inch of thickness that's the length amount of time it has to air dry for and then it has to kiln dry beyond that typically anywhere from like three to four months so you've got the dry time and then you've got all the machinery it takes to process these big oversized pieces and then you need a bunch of land to store the material what is the range of possible more footage for walnut view uh let's see like the cheapest material we sell um the inch thick like short stuff will be 350 to four bucks aboard foot um maybe the most expensive material like really figured really big and oversized will be 60 squared foot the high end now my cousin found a guy on facebook that was selling sycamore slabs for five bucks aboard foot that were the same size as this one why are these so expensive so many deals to be had on facebook the reason these slabs are so expensive is because they're properly air dried and they're properly kiln dried so that amount of machining that goes in we're charging for in the board foot price the other reason these slabs are so expensive is because bastogne for one it's it's a hybrid um so out of all the material that we get it's maybe two or three percent of the makeup um of our inventory um and then the color so bath stone is a combination of english walnut and claro walnut so you have a lot of the browns and blacks that you get in english walnut but then you have some of the reds and purples and oranges and so when you combine those two colors i think it's second to none when you look at all of our domestic hardwood species that we have here in the u.s you told me that these slabs won't be ready until january 2022. why can't you just put these in a kiln and get it very faster so we can't just put these slabs into a kiln right away because if you do you'll encounter a bunch of defects from drying mostly warping and checking so the name of the game in wood drying is low and slow so if you dry something really quickly what you'll do is case harden the outside of the slab and then trap all the moisture inside um and then you'll have problems right away and down the road with warping checking and twisting but if you dry it nice and slow moisture is allowed to move from the center of the slab to the outside of the slab without being impeded the other reason you can't put walnut slabs into the kiln right away so when you first cut walnut it appears a little more yellow or green in color so it doesn't turn brown until it oxidizes and it's not going to oxidize if you dry it right away so it has to sit outside it can be under cover or inside but it just has to be exposed to air for a prolonged period of time it can't just go into the kiln and be zapped right away for anybody just cutting their own wood at home and dragging itself do you have any tips for them if you're cutting your own wood at home i think the most important thing to remember would be to take care of your material it's that simple so when the logs come in you want to make sure you seal the ends so they don't crack or split then your logs can sit for a while they won't get damaged after that once you cut the material you need to reseal the ends so they don't crack or split that's because moisture leaves the ends of boards faster than it does any other surface and then after that the most important part is to get it stickered so that's when you stack lumber but then you put spacers in between the lumber to allow air to pass through the material if you don't get it stickered right away a lot of times what will happen is you'll accumulate mold so the material will start to change colors look really funky so you need to get it stickered to allow it to dry and then you you need to make sure it's out of the sun and you need to make sure it's covered so if it's out of the sun [Music] you'll avoid the likelihood of your material actually being case hardened you know which is where you're trapping moisture inside and then if it's covered you're not reintroducing moisture the material slowing down the drying process all right that is the whole video big thanks to aaron over at gobi walnut for taking the time for that awkward little interview on my iphone but to show thanks to him this week start your question or comment with gobi g-o-b-y that way i will know you watch the entire video and i promise i will answer all of your questions or comments first thanks again and please subscribe for more videos just like this one

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 1,059,229

Keywords: live edge, live edge wood near me, wood slabs, live edge wood, live edge slab, blacktail studio, how to woodworking, walnut slabs, Bastogne walnut, english walnut, black walnut, walnut wood slabs, live edge furniture, wood buying guide

Id: O4OtHhzzurw

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/cpasawyer]

Cam is a really cool guy; I aspire to get clients like that some day. Also love the Goby product. I’m going to need to upgrade my 880 setup haha.