Luke Evans painstakingly crafted the bar top at 1908 BBQ and Bourbon.
Night life on Glover Street can expect to be a bit livelier with the grand opening of 1908 BBQ and Bourbon, a full-scale restaurant and bar that opened Jan. 19. Located in the former Gibson’s Mercantile building, built in 1908, the repurposed building blends the old and the new in showcasing the original architecture, hand-crafted furnishings and unique antiques.
Upon entrance, one will be hard-pressed not to notice the original red brick walls. Brick in general was a rare commodity in the Methow Valley due to the absence of a railroad. The brick used for this structure is said to have been manufactured locally in a now defunct kiln on the western side of Loup Loup Pass.
Next to the entrance sits the original steel cash register believed to be the original till used in the mercantile over a century ago.
The exquisite bar top is jaw-dropping gorgeous and can be credited as a passion project for Luke Evans. Evans has been developing his table top designs since the debut of the fire tables at East 20 Pizza. The live edge black walnut slab came from a tree near Duvall and was hand selected by Evans.
Milled with a portable sawmill called a Lucas mill, the slab was tediously sanded and impregnated with epoxy resin to harden the grain and smooth the surface. After layer upon layer of resin, the bar is a beautiful piece of functional sculpture, worthy of any lowball filled with premium bourbon or whiskey.
Of special notice in the restaurant is the upright Bush & Lane piano beautifully refurbished with cutting-edge technology and the local expertise of Mike Kamansky. Kamansky, a musician, teacher and piano technician, procured the antique piano from his mentor, Ed McMurrow, a master piano restorer and owner of Light Hammer Piano in Edmonds.
The Bush & Lane restoration involved custom technology designed through collaboration between Kamansky and McMurrow, while the work itself was performed by one of McMurrow’s trainees. According to Kamansky, there’s no one definition of piano restoration. It can involve replacing parts to rehabilitating old ones. In the case of the Bush & Lane, it’s a one-of-a-kind in the restoration world.
Kamansky and McMurrow wanted to convert the upright to align more closely to the touch and sound of a grand piano. To do so, they needed to circumvent the traditional construction of an upright that relies on strings and overcome gravity, or rather mimic it.
Now, they didn’t take the piano to outer space to get around the gravity issue but collaborated to design a custom piece that centers the mass of the action (the part of the piano that takes the motion of the key and moves the hammer to strike the string) in a fashion that is more sensitive and responsive like a grand piano, which relies on gravity. To create the specialty parts, Kamansky 3D printed the pieces right here in his home in the valley.
3D printing has opened the door for small niche fabricators, like Kamansky, to design and build his own tools for his work. He said that without 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, enabling a short timeframe and minimal investment, the traditional path of manufacturing would have typically involved prototyping, research and development where costs would be prohibitive. The result is a sound and feel that makes for a unique antique, and one that will hopefully fill the airways often and bring back life to the 1908 building.
