Oxbow Atelier
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The studio

Named for the bend
a slow river carves

An oxbow is the U-shaped meander a river cuts when it stops hurrying. We borrowed the name because it is how we work: the resin river in every piece follows the slab’s own live edge. We do not straighten it.

The Oxbow Atelier workshop: a walnut slab on sawhorses under a single warm work light, hand planes on the bench behind
The bench room, Bow, Washington

Founded 2016, still eight forms

The studio began with one river table built for a Skagit Valley farmhouse kitchen and a waiting list we never advertised. Ten years on we keep the catalog at eight standing forms — enough to hold a range, few enough that every slab still crosses the same two benches and the same four hands.

We build eleven to fourteen pieces a year. That number is set by cure times, not by demand — a deep pour cures in thirds over three weeks, and we will not stack the schedule against it.

Salvage sourcing

Trees that fell, not trees that were felled

Every slab comes from three small mills we have worked with for a decade — windthrow, orchard retirements, and storm salvage, milled where the tree came down.

Newaukum Hardwoods

Chehalis, WA

claro walnut

McKenzie Bend Sawyers

Vida, OR

Oregon white oak

Wickersham Salvage Mill

Deming, WA

big-leaf maple

A year per inch

Slabs air-dry in the yard one year for every inch of thickness, stickered and weighted, then finish in the kiln to eight percent moisture. The drying yard is the studio’s real inventory — three years of tables you cannot buy yet.

Each slab is lotted the day it arrives: species, mill, board feet, and the date it can first be flattened. The lot code follows the piece onto its spec sheet and into its care card.

Live-edge slabs stacked on stickers in the drying yard, end-grain lot codes facing out
The drying yard — one year per inch

The four tints

Mixed in the studio, named for the water

We tint resin by hand, per pour, from four standing recipes. Each product line keeps its own tint; Clear belongs to whichever slab earns it.

Glacier Teal

Cold-water green, poured deep. Reads near-black in low light, glacial in sun.

Tannin Amber

The color of oak-steeped creek water. Warm against burl figure.

Deepwater

Navy at depth. Holds its own against blackened steel.

Clear

No pigment at all. For slabs whose voids do the talking.

Hand-tinting resin in the pour room: steel cups of glacier-teal pigment beside a masked walnut slab
The pour room — lifts of 12 mm, cured in thirds

Slab to table, six steps

  1. Slab Salvaged logs from three small mills. We buy trees that fell, not trees that were felled.
  2. Dry Air-dried one year per inch of thickness, then kiln-finished to 8% moisture. Dated, lotted, stickered.
  3. Flatten Router-sled flattening to within 0.5 mm across the span. The slab decides its final thickness.
  4. Pour Hand-tinted resin, poured in lifts of 12 mm. Deep rivers cure in thirds over three weeks.
  5. Cure Full cure at 72°F before any tool touches the surface again. This is the step we will not compress.
  6. Finish Sanded to 2000 grit over the resin, hardwax oil over everything. Matte. The grain does the shining.