Natural Tables

Natural Tables

 I harvested the trunk of a White Oak tree from the yard of my Chapel Hill customers in 2012 and have been air drying it since. They had another small log the tree man left on the property so they asked me to build some tables from the log to use on their patio. The log was pretty soft around the edges, especially where it was laying on the ground. I used 150 psi compressed air to clean up the logs. I used a series of wire brushes to remove the soft bark which left an interesting pattern. I cut sections of the log and sanded the best top side of each log. I finished the tops and sides with several coats of satin spar varnish. The varnish helped stiffen the ridges of the areas where the wire brush was used. The top of the long table was the first cut from the trunk I harvested. I used spar varnish to seal the board on all sides. When I stickered the log to dry I sealed all cut edges with blue paint that I had in the shop. Since my customer is a Kentucky girl, I had to leave the blue edge!