I recently completed this piece and love the way it came out.  The project expanded my woodworking skills in that I’ve never made a curved arch on this scale before.  The woodworking was straightforward and the crux of the piece was in ensuring that the arch top met the table top bottom precisely.  My wife and I decided that walnut would work best for the home’s decor and that was another challenge.  It’s difficult to find lumber yards locally here in WY that carry domestic hardwoods so I buy my lumber online without knowing exactly what I’ll receive.  I’ve been using a place in North Carolina, Steve Wall Lumber, for years and they are really good in ensuring that I get the lumber necessary for a project.  For example, I needed a lot of 8/4 (2″ thick) walnut in 6′ minimum lengths and all color matched as much as possible.  My order included approximately 50% overage in order to account for “unusable” boards but in the end I had to make use of whatever they sent to me.  That raised another challenge for this project in terms of grain matching the various boards into the different table parts.  You can see in the pictures that I was able to mill all of the supporting pieces (arch, legs, feet, etc) from relatively straight-grained lumber whereas the table top is made from lumber with interesting grain patterns and color swirls.

Walnut is one of the most expensive hardwoods and even more expensive in the 8/4 thickness.  The lumber cost alone for this project was nearly $900!  That cost includes both the 50% overage as well as shipping.  The overage was much more than I actually needed, but I’ve learned over the years that it’s better to have more lumber to get better grain matching than not enough.  It’s actually more cost effective believe it or not.  Because of this overage, there is enough lumber left over that I will be able to design and build a small entryway bench.  Two pieces for the price of one: a bargain, right?