Mary Dailinger, of Dailinger Designs was contracted to design the the Smoke City Char Bar contacted Kevin in late 2019 wanting a unique VIP table of the new restaurant, it took a few months to get the go-ahead from the owner of the restaurant as they grappled with fitting out a high end BBQ oriented dining experience in an upcoming complex in the arts district in downtown Los Angeles…then COVID hit. The project eventually got the go-ahead in June 2021, and the restaurant is now open.
This is the story of the development of the table.
2 inch thick slabs of beech plywood, heavyweight strength for the core of the table
A large piece of ply with no defects and an interesting pattern in the grain
Straight after the Fractal Burning, the raw material of the art, at this stage the wood looks horrible, but the piece is in there waiting to come out
After the cut, starting to look like something now, and the surface meets the base for the first time
Given the cutting complete, and the edges shaped, its time to start looking for the perfect table in there which meets the customer specifications (a narrower table than normal at 31 inches, but long at 102 inches)
Making sure the legs will fit
After some cleanup, the burning tends to dye the wood and roughen the surface, so I go through a cleaning and preparation process to get it back to looking good
Bending the wood for the edges, eventually the table will form to these, but this is after several hours of steaming the wood
The legs arrive, Etsy is a perfect place to find exactly what you are looking for in table legs, the designer picked these out of a range I sent to her as options, and they work really well on the finished table
Time to start making scary cuts that will be visible in the finished table
Having cut the top pieces, time to cut the curves in to the base
All work is heavily supervised by Mia!
Painting the background and gluing the Pangea pieces into place
After the first pour of black epoxy with a small amount of shimmer, at this stage the sides look pretty rough
Sanded and smoothed side pockets of overflow epoxy
Finally after 5-6 layers of epoxy a completely covered smooth table
Eventually a finished table
And assembling the edges of the table
The shapes all start to come together
All the spill over pockets cut and finally ready to pour some epoxy
same stage after the first pour, the top looks good, with no major issues
Now its time to build up the epoxy in layers to cover the whole table
But still with drips around it from the overflow, but all the work is finishing now
Signed and marked underneath, just in case someone wants to find out who made this
Out for delivery
The Smoke City Char Bar, opening soon!!
This isn’t where it will go in the end, but this is what an unopened restaurant looks like
The Smoke City Char Bar at 899 Traction Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90013 is open