http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa385/peterrum/Driftwood%20table/Kutzallgrindinghead.jpg

http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa385/peterrum/Driftwood%20table/Grindingtheinside.jpg

The surface wood of the stump has a grey patina to it but this has to be removed as the wood is too weathered and soft for a decent finish. I tried a test with some shellac on the original surface and it ended up looking like mud so that pretty well made my mind up for me and the outer surface has to come off. I started by sanding with some 40 grit paper but it was taking an awfully long time to get to the good wood.

http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa385/peterrum/Driftwood%20table/Rootcolour.jpg

http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa385/peterrum/Driftwood%20table/Grain.jpg

How can I do this faster? It was just going to take too long. So a bit of research again and i found that some people have used the crushed walnut shells for sandblasting decks and the outside of log homes. Its alot better on the lungs and the environment so it might just work for me. I was able to find a local shop that sold it in 50lb. bags for $20 and a friend of mine had a small sandblaster that I could borrow for this part of the job. So I suited up with PPE and went to work. Here is the result.

http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa385/peterrum/Driftwood%20table/Sandblasting1.jpg

http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa385/peterrum/Driftwood%20table/Sandblasting2.jpg

The blasting cleaned up alot of the surface but I will still have to hand sand all of the surfaces. I expect that I will be sanding starting with 40 grit, then 100, then 120. We will see once I get to that stage. I am going to put this project away until the fall/winter as the fishing is too good right now and this will have to wait until I have many spare hours to commit to it.

Well after a few hours and months of thinking about it and getting input from all sorts of people I settled on a plan to make this a coffee table with a glass top on it. Now to get to work on it.

The first part was finding a suitable surface to flatten and to try to get the best look out of the piece so after turning it over and over I settled on where my flat top would be. I used a lazer level and a pencil to mark the areas that I wanted to cut. A reciprocating saw took care of some of the smaller roots and then I used a chainsaw to get the bigger piece off. These were rough cuts and as long as I was within an inch of my lazer lines that was good enough.

Now the big chunks were off but I needed to get the top as close to dead flat as possible. I did quite a bit of research on line and could not find anything that was specific to my needs but settled on building a large router sled, similar to what is used for flattening the tops of large slabs of wood. I built a crib for the piece and it is about 4’x3’ square and 19” high. I built the crib out of some scrap constuction grade lumber and plywood, it didnt have to look pretty. Then I built a 4’ long sled that I could run my router in. I made this out of baltic birch, clamped a couple of scrap pieces onto the ends to give me the gap I needed and started running the sled across the top of the driftwood to level it out. I used a 3/4” straight bit and only took 1/4” off the top at a time. After a few passes I bottomed out the router and could not go any deeper so I slid a piece of 3/4” plywood under the piece in order to raise it and continued with my light passes. After about 5 passes all the pieces which will support the glass top were level with each other. It took me about 6 hours to accomplish all this and I am very happy with the results.