I have a tree making it’s way over to the Bonsai Europa Exhibition in a few weeks time and a while back I had to start looking for a suitable table for it. This proved harder than expected with many of the usual stand makers being snowed under with work and most of the tables I seen for sale being wrong for the tree.

Then out of the blue, a local chap on Facebook started to chat about bonsai with me and after doing a bit of stalking on his profile I saw he was rather good with wood (oh er!). Did this mean that he was already making stands and tables? No. Did he have any experience in this? No. In fact most of his work was done with a chainsaw!!!

So we got chatting about stands, his names Jeff by the way, and Jeff said he’d give it ago.

Would you trust this man with a delicate job?!

I had my doubts that he’d be able to turn out a table for Europa. However, I also saw these that he had made, and the finish achieved impressed me and gave me hope.

This one was craved out with a chainsaw!! The book not the text 😉

I’d been looking around to try and find some nice wood for the table to be made from and after chatting with my parents this old table was acquired.

My Grandmother bought this table second hand in 1920 and I have many childhood memories of crawling under it. It had been placed against a radiator and over the years the drop leaf had warped and was no longer usable. I asked Jeff if he could use it and got the nod. Turns out it’s Oak, none of us were sure.

I gave the table to Jeff with a rough idea of what I was after knowing that he was going to be restricted in what he could achieve with the material given, I kept my fingers crossed. This is it coming together.

Dismantled, some nice grain there

The natural wood colour after some sanding

Some edge detail added

Leg work

Starting to come together, can you tell what it is yet?

Some decisions about colour

and then…

Final colour finish

Jeff’s skills in finishing car body work, did I mention he does that too, really paid off in getting a great finish to the table. There’s still a little waxing to be done and the transit box to be made for it but I’m absolutely delighted with it and the history of the wood makes it even better for me.

Jeff has now been bitten by the bonsai bug and I’m helping him on the road to having some nice wee trees and the bonus is, he actually enjoyed making this bad boy, and and has already started on other projects for me with a few club members queuing up with orders too. Watch this space for more about Jeff’s work.

Jeff, thanks for the hours you put into this project, I’m delighted with the result. You had to work with dodgy wood, no idea what this was all about, and the size was restricted by what we had and yet you still achieved a fantastic result. I can’t wait to see this next one if this is your first attempt!!

As usual the photos don’t really do the table justice, why not see it for yourself at Bonsai Europa in October….