Beginning with slab lumber, your wood panel is produced from live edge wood slabs! This style offers a 'live edge' where the edge of your panel remains natural to the original contour of the tree! Selecting a live edge custom wood panel will allow you to choose from locally sourced urban lumber or exotic tropical hardwoods!

Our butcher block custom wood panels are produced from dimensional lumber, in the species of your choice! Lumber is cut with precision and glued together at the top and bottom faces of the board creating a panel that consists of the edges of the the lumber. This method is the most durable of all options and is a great choice when selecting a wood panel that is very thick!

This is the traditional style of a custom wood panel and is often the most cost effective! Beginning with dimensional lumber, boards are ripped with clean straight edges and then the edges of the boards are glued together to create your custom wood panel. The panel will consist of the face of the boards.

Planer Finish - PLUS -

• Minor cracks, knots, & imperfections are filled with Oak City Customs Epoxy, filler and/or glue, 1/8" wide and smaller imperfections may still be present
• Sanded to 150 grit with our 52" wide-belt finish sander to meet any specified thickness or 0.12” less than planer
• Cut-to-size on our CNC machine or panel saw

Wide-Belt Finish - PLUS -

• Micro epoxy fills
• Edges sanded clean of saw marks
• Edge detail applied (round-over, bevel, ogee, etc.)
• Sanded to 180 grit with our 52" orbital finish sander

Orbital Finish - PLUS -

• Final inspection & 220 grit hand orbital sanding
• 3 coats minimum to top surface & 2 coats minimum to bottom surface, of clear satin finish or Rubio Monocoat finish

When producing hardwood panels and custom furnishings such as table-tops, we typically recommend beginning your project with 8/4 material to result in a final thickness of roughly 1-5/8".

Here is some more detail about how our wood panel process impacts the thickness of your material.

• Most 8/4 rough lumber is going to be 2.1" -1.9" thick 
• We stock S3S material (Surfaced 3 Sides) which is 1-15/16" (1.93") and has been skip-planed
• We glue up panels at 1-15/16" and then the planer will generally get a panel clean with a thickness between 1.8" - 1.75"
• Our wide-belt sander takes .03 per pass and takes 4 passes to get a panel completely sanded, which is .12"
• All of that means that the expected finished thickness after the wide-belt is going to be 1.68" - 1.63", so 8/4 glue-ups will usually be 1-5/8" after the wide-belt sander, when beginning with 8/4 material
• If you would like your panel thicker than 1-5/8", we recommend beginning your project with thicker stock

Let me know if that makes sense, or if you have any questions. We are looking forward to helping with your project!

At our facility, located near Raleigh in Zebulon, NC we efficiently produce custom wood panels that are available in 4 finish levels. We also stock 4/4 - 12/4 material in over a dozen wood species. The following information will guide you to selecting the correct material and finish level for your project. If you have any questions, please contact us!