This piece is a four drawer chest in roasted red oak.
This technique involves kiln firing premium red oak. The oak is stacked on sleepers as you would to kiln dry, but the heat is cranked up and the wood is left to cook for a few days. The stack is arranged to allow for consistent and equal roasting so the colour remains constant. If you roast the wood too long it will burn and char, just like badly roasted beef. Once the oak has charred it has lost its character and is unusable.

I made the carcass of 4/4 (1") material to add a bit of strength as the unit is 50" wide. This thickness and the polished marker board back make this a pretty solid piece. All the carcass joins are hand cut through dovetails (haven't done those in a while-you can probably tell!) I have since acquired a very nice dovetail jig (thanks bro) made by Akeda. This will allow me to set and cut the 40 tails and pins in about an hour, not the three days it took by hand! These shots were taken in my shop and are pre finish.

I like the chocolate colour achieved by roasting and will definitely use this technique again even though it is expensive (thanks Shalom @ Reclaim!, Aspen, Co) But the reason I did use the roasted red oak was quite experimental. For the finished article I wanted an ebonized oak finish. Ebonizing is an old school finish where you turn the wood black, like ebony...

pete@pdwoodworking.com