Wood projects from tree?

July 2, 2018 12:03 PM

I'm having a large liquidamber tree removed, and I was thinking of asking the tree guys to leave me some of the trunk, to make into a little table or something. What else can I do with it? Is this a terrible idea?
posted by lemonade to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

If nothing else they should charge you less since they won't be removing the stump or the roots. If it's very big you may find that the trunk is hollow. I think you might want to wait to see if it is before you make plans about using the stump.
posted by mareli at 12:15 PM on July 2, 2018

Wait, are you using the trunk as a table in situ? Or like a slice from it to put legs on and finish?

If the latter, you'd need to season the lumber first. It probably wouldn't be worth it if it's not something you've done before.
posted by supercres at 12:20 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Having a slice of a big old tree is nice. I recommend waterlox as a presevative/ finish. Used it on my pine slab countertops. 1st coat 25% waterlox, 75% turps, increasing the proportion of product for each of 5 coats. Countertops are dinged, but spills are no problem.
posted by theora55 at 12:31 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

The wood is fairly soft, so whatever you make will dent easily. It's less stable than average, so you can expect significant warpage to occur during drying if cut lengthwise into boards (which you probably don't have the equipment to do), and a lot of splitting if left in rounds. You could make something very rustic for outdoor use. I don't know whether it's prone to rot quickly.
posted by jon1270 at 1:09 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Ah, I understood you to mean that you would use the stump in the ground as a base for a table. Which did you mean, that, or milling some of the wood into boards?
posted by mareli at 1:39 PM on July 2, 2018

Response by poster: I will have the roots/stump ground out, but the tree guy offered to cut up the trunk into 18" chunks that I can use. Jon1270 is correct, I do not have tools to cut into boards, but I was thinking of turning a couple of those whole trunk sections into side tables. I thought I could chisel out a bowl from a smaller chunk, but maybe that isn't worth the effort if there's a lot of splitting. We got all of 5" of rain this winter so rotting won't be much of a problem whatever I do with it.
posted by lemonade at 1:44 PM on July 2, 2018

My dad made a glass topped side table using a chunk of tree trunk from his backyard - his general process was to dry the thing for a looong time (ie forget about it in the garage for a couple years), seal it with some polyurethane, screw in some metal pipe fittings to support the glass/level the surface and epoxy the glass onto the metal. The wood and pipe fittings give it a neat industrial type look.
posted by btfreek at 1:53 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

We have a lovely turned bowl from a catalpa tree that was cut down in front of our house before we moved in. The previous homeowner left it for us as a housewarming gift as he felt it belonged with the house. We use it to store keys (and will leave it with the house if/when we move). I'm no expert on wood types or what trees make good bowls, but it's a really nice, meaningful thing to have.
posted by castlebravo at 2:04 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

My parents-in-law gave everyone in the family a set of little turned bowls one year from a tree they had cut down in the yard. They took the wood to a local wood turner to make the bowls. They were really nice gifts, and meaningful because most people in the family had some memories connected with that tree.

Also, fresh unseasoned (green) wood is great for whittling projects. Whittling gets more difficult the older, drier, and harder the wood is. You could buy a good knife and learn to make spoons, or something else.
posted by lollusc at 5:24 PM on July 2, 2018

Fun! If you're still in LA, ambient humidity is low enough to dry it out. Just store it someplace covered for several months, and turn it over a few times. It *will* change color during this period, but less so the less light it gets.

a couple tips:
-whatever you do to one side of a slab, do it to the other (coating-wise I mean; you don't need to sand both sides to a mirror finish, but if you're putting a bunch of poly on one side do it to the other as well).

-Take off as much of the bark as you can. It looks cool, but it's a completely different texture than the rest of the wood, and tends to harbor critters. I usually do this with a wire brush attachment to an angle grinder or cordless screwdriver.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:05 PM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]