Harris Kaneshiro is preparing to open his antique shop on Monday, but there’s one thing in the store on Keawe Street that’s not for sale.
Harris Kaneshiro is preparing to open his antique shop on Monday, but there’s one thing in the store on Keawe Street that’s not for sale.
Among the displays of vintage aloha shirts, Japanese dolls, glass sea floats, and Civil War-era swords are examples of Kaneshiro’s woodworking, including a particularly striking table with a familiar outline.
The large slab of pine wood that forms the tabletop bears more than a passing resemblance to the Big Island, which was why Kaneshiro decided to buy it several years ago at an auction in Hawaiian Paradise Park.
“Mostly, I buy it from people, and I finish it myself,” he said. But it wasn’t until this year that he began the arduous process of sanding the rough wood to a flat surface suitable for varnishing.
After two months of sanding, the tree’s rings became more visible.
That was when a Hawaiian friend of his dropped by, Kaneshiro said, and upon seeing the table got chicken skin.
“He looked at it for a long time,” Kaneshiro continued. The rings in the center of the table looked like a topographic map — in this case of Mauna Kea, set in tabletop terms almost exactly where the mountain stands in the real world.
A second set of tree rings appears where Mauna Loa would be.
Kaneshiro had no idea the pine slab had these features when he first bought it, he said. It was the island shape he thought was interesting.
More friends came by to see the table as Kaneshiro finished the varnish and added legs made of Kona coffee trees (the wood has a great character, he said). He has since added temporary, taped-on labels marking where various Big Island towns would be located.
“I put it on display for everyone to see,” Kaneshiro said.
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.