I’ve sent out an email to Philadelphia Woodworks to see if they had a sander that is big enough for my slab or if they knew any of the local cabinet makers that may be able to help. They do have a 15” open-ended wide belt sander which doesn’t help me, but they are seeing if there’s something else in the area I might be able to use.

This past Thursday, I finally had a chance to borrow a truck and pick up the slab. Time to bring her home. Now I might have misspoke by calling the issue a tear-out (or I was told incorrectly or just ignorance). It is more mill marks then tear-out. Either way, it’s a low spot and has to go!

The MiL’s BF came over and the first thing we did was take a straight edge and shine a light behind it.

After seeing this, he suggests we just try scrapping it! There are low spots on either side of the mill marks so it doesn’t look like we’d end up creating a deep dish. We’d actually end up leveling the area.

We also tried a large planer but ended up with some tear-out. With the wave in the grain, he wasn’t getting the right ‘read’ and I wasn’t about to try. Maybe he had to go with an even shallower cut. He was able to reduce size of the mill marks and then went back to the scrapper. The results are looking good!

Still going to continue the search for a drum sander. There are small hills and valleys throughout the slab. The MiL BF is even talking about taking a piece of carbon paper and rubbing it softly so it will make all the ‘high’ spots visible and then plane or scrape them out.

We also cut it down to size and removed the bark. We used my circular saw and a saw guide. Had to eye ball it a bit since neither end or sides were square. Once we cut the one side, snapped a caulk line so that we could use it as a reference to cut the other side. I probably could have use a new blade, gone a little slower and inserted a splitter a little earlier. In the end, both sides are practically square, only off by 1/16”.

The project and research continues!

Word gets back to the MiL’s boyfriend that we have this huge piece of wood with a rough area left by the planer. He immediately knows that the grain must have slightly changed directions in this area for this to happen. I had to refer to the picture to verify that he was correct! Then he tells me with a little urgency in his voice, “You’re going to have to send it through a planer again to get it smooth. And finding someone with a 36” planer isn’t going to be easy. I might have a friend down in Maryland but I’m not even sure of that.” Now the wife is panicking. She’s wondering what did we get ourselves into and did we just waste our money on this piece of wood. I kept telling her we’re fine. The guy said we can sand it, we can sand it. It will take a while but all you need is a lot of patience, lots of sand paper and a straight edge.

The next day, the MiL’s BF, calls me and says he’s been thinking about it some more. He’s moved away from the re-planing idea. He thinks we might just end up with the same results (tear-out). So the next step is to talk to some more people and possibly find a drum sander that is large enough for this piece.

Monday rolls around and I get another call from the MiL’s BF. He’s now been talking to the SiL’s FiL and another friend; both make furniture as a hobby and both give him almost the same advice. They said we could send it through the planer again but make sure you only remove a little material. This should help prevent any further tear-out from happening. The next suggestion is to cut the piece into 2. Then send the 2 halves through a sander or planer and then epoxy them back together. He said with the grain, you’d never know that it was split. Um, yikes!

Yeah, this is going to be a bigger project then we originally thought. At this time I don’t have a better picture of the tear out, but any and all suggestions are welcome!

The first thing I decided to do was to look for local stores that sold reclaimed wood. I was hoping we’d find something cool to use for our project. I can across Provenance. One Saturday, a couple of weeks ago we decided to take a look. Little did we know that as soon as we walked in our plans would change. Just to the left of the entrance was 5 or 6 slabs of beautiful black walnut.

To be continued…