The detail that caught me off guard is the oil schedule: three coats of tung oil underneath and seven on the working surface. That is a lot of patient brushing, and it shows in the smooth amber finish on the finished piece. Salvaged lumber milled back in the 1950s ending up as a food-safe looking kitchen surface is a genuinely satisfying outcome for old boards that most people would have burned.
The construction approach is well thought through. Every board first went over with a metal detector to find hidden nails, since hitting one would have chewed up the blades, and the contaminated sections were then cut away on a miter saw. From there the boards were ripped into 1.5-inch strips, turned quarter-grain up, and biscuit-joined with glue into sub-panels sized to fit through the thickness planer. Only after planing those sub-assemblies were the biscuit slots cut along the main joints for the full glue-up under bar clamps. Breaking it into planer-sized panels seems like the smart way to handle a top this size with benchtop machines.
The sink work stands out too. A jigsaw roughed out the opening, then the sink itself was clamped underneath with brackets and screws to act as a guide while a bearing flush-trimmed the edge clean. The bowl was bedded in silicone with mounting clips, and the faucet hole was drilled with a Forstner bit. Edges got a 1/8-inch roundover after sanding, and the top was belt sanded to scribe against the wall.
The one open item is that this piece is only part of the counter. A larger peninsula is still to come, with a second part planned for late summer or fall of this year, so the full picture is not on the table yet.
Project by Les Mason Woodworks. Watch it on their YouTube channel: