Tony Muto grew up on Nauset’s outer beach. “I’ve been out there since I was in diapers,” he says, and he means that quite literally.
Among his baby photos is one of his mother, Christina, holding him — she’s in a jacket, he’s in a hooded onesie — with the Eldia, a 478-foot Maltese freighter that was blown ashore off East Orleans during a storm on March 30, 1984, in the background. Although he was far too young to understand the hullabaloo that surrounded the grounding, Muto still counts it as one of his formative experiences at Nauset Beach.
His passion for woodworking came a bit later. As a teen at Nauset Regional High School, he took a shed building class with Karl Hoyt, the now-retired woodshop teacher and a noted luthier. “I loved the creativity and working with my hands,” says Muto, who started Coast to Coast Carpentry in 2013 — the company’s name is a reference to his time spent in California, Florida, and now back on the Cape.
When a neighbor asked if he could make a portable beach table inspired by one from “back in the day,” Muto was glad for the opportunity to make something that combined his two loves — woodworking and beachgoing. He and his brother Nick, a commercial fisherman, made the first one together. Then they made a few extras for friends and family.
The design is minimalist and assembles quickly. Slices of three-quarter-inch birch plywood slide together in a way that’s similar to a simple sashimono design, a style of Japanese joinery that eschews nails or fasteners in favor of joints that interlock like puzzle pieces. One sheet of plywood yields one table, measuring roughly four feet long, with very little waste.
“Memorial Day, about two years ago, I set them up on the beach,” Muto says, where they got lots of attention: “Five or six people asked me to make them one.” The flat pieces are ideal for sliding into the bed of a pickup truck and can comfortably seat four adults or six kids. Sealed for water resistance (but not waterproof), the sturdy birchwood holds steady, even in strong winds.
Muto uses a commercial laser wood engraver to etch designs on the top and sides of the tables. The patterns were part of what drew in those admiring beachgoers. Muto can reproduce most any design from a digital image, even ones with intricate detail — he’s done everything from a shark to a family crest to a kraken sea monster overtaking a ship. Muto posts his new designs on Instagram. Blank tables start at $400, while prices for custom engraved tables depend on the complexity of the design. “The one with the great white was about a 10-hour burn,” he says. The most involved design so far, the aforementioned kraken, took almost 50 hours.
Although the beach tables remain secondary to his core work as a fine carpenter, Muto enjoys seeing what designs people dream up. And, of course, he makes time to get “out there.” If you’re at Nauset Beach South this summer, you might see him there at one of his tables. The laid-back communal vibe keeps him coming back. “It’s always good people and good times,” he says.
