Red Oak "Endgrain" Outdoor Table

Over a year ago, my Sister was given two HUGE slabs of red oak from a recently felled tree. Although sopping wet and covered in saw dust she still saw the potential and made me a deal – I get to keep one of them if I make her a center table for her patio out of the other one. Deal!

After basically forgetting about it for a full year, it was finally dried enough to work on a month or so ago.

The first part was surfacing – I had to make myself a HUGE router sled to accomplish this – take a look at the second picture – the table it’s on is four feet square. After an hour or so I had two perfectly flat sides to work with.

Then came the filling of the cracks – I used poly glue and then topped it off with a mixture of super glue and fine sawdust of various species from the base of my sander. Also placed five bow-ties on one of the edges to (hopefully) keep a nasty crack from expanding. Three on the top and two on the bottom.

A BUNCH of sanding and it was ready for legs. Found four suitable oak branches and formed tenons on them to match my largest Forstner bit.

A few coats of Australian Outdoor Oil and voila!

Dimensions: Approx 36” diameter and four inch slab of oak – stands around 15” tall and weighs at least 60 pounds.

One thing to note – this was originally two oak trees – they “merged” after 25 or so years of growth – you can see the bark at the very middle of the piece where they smooshed together – very cool!

Anyone want to count the rings? I have no idea how old this is….......

-bob

-- Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. - Thomas Carlyle http://www.ffrf.org