How does one go about restoring a 20,000 year old woolly mammoth tusk? Yes… as in the woolly mammoth, who walked the earth 300,000 years ago. If this is the first time you’ve had to consider this question, you aren’t alone. 

What would you do if a table you had dedicated a lot of time and effort to crafting for a custom order, was held up on its way to New York City? Not because of a misprint on a shipping label, or the parcel itself having sustained damage, but because you were being accused of potential drug smuggling. Specially: chalking a table’s shipping crate full of marijuana. 

Yeah…this really happened….

How do you justify burning a perfectly good slab of wood? You don’t. Unless you’re planning on doing something completely different, inarguably ambitious, and potentially dumb. When making tables, every decision from what base hardware will be used, to the specific colour palette chosen, to the wood itself; is made from a place of pure subjectivity. That’s why, when given a $20 slab of clean maple, it made sense to try something entirely new. Because why not?

What happened?

To fully understand the gravity of what created a visceral sense of panic at the very end of an otherwise successful project, we need to first set the scene. If you have ever built anything then you know that there is no greater sense of accomplishment than the moment of successful completion. Now, imagine working your way through an entire project, only to find out, upon finishing, that there is an integral flaw. The flaw, in this case, is that the moisture level of the wood was irreparably high. If you want to experience this feeling first-hand, check out the video appropriately titled:I Lost $30,000 .