Calgary woodworking company delivers table to KISS frontman

This small Calgary business never thought social media would lead to a trip to California to drop off work for a rock star.

Paul Stanley is used to dazzling other people, but it was the KISS frontman who was left impressed with the work of a Calgary company last month.

For more than a year, the lead singer of the legendary rock band worked with Calgary’s Black Forest Wood Company to build a massive custom table.

“Oh, this is great! Wow,” Stanley said as he unwrapped the protective plastic to get a first look at the table in person.

“I knew it was going to be great, but this is way beyond what I expected,” Stanley added. “It’s a piece of art.”

The family-run business first noticed the singer had followed their Instagram account about 18 months ago.

Months later came a phone call from the voice behind the hits I Was Made for Lovin’ You and Detroit Rock City.

“My jaw kind of dropped,” Dylan Thomas, general manager of Black Forest Wood Co., said of the first call.

“Something just spoke to him about the work we did, and we got to work with him on commissioning this custom dining table and creating it for him.”

The final product is a 15.5-foot-long by five-foot-wide table made of resin and walnut burl Stanley chose from about 12 samples.

The wood was sourced from Oregon and shipped up to Calgary to be worked on, and then the thousand-pound table was sent down to Beverly Hills, where a dozen people carefully hauled it into the rocker’s home.

“Paul Stanley actually made us all feel quite comfortable. He was on an equal level with us, and it kind of took away from that anxiety. It was just more excitement,” said Brad Thomas, president of Black Forest.

The crew also surprised Stanley with a custom-made guitar crafted out of maple burl.

“He had the same kind of reaction to the table, and he’s sitting there saying, ‘Oh, as soon as I get my amp in this house, I’m going to be playing this thing,’” said Dylan Thomas.

For the table, Stanley opted for a high-gloss finish on the resin and a matte-stain finish on the wood, which took about a week of detailing and sanding alone.

All told, the table took about 300 man-hours to build.