A one board coffee table or making something out of nothing

Kcwoodbutcher · December 11, 2014, 09:16:58 PM

A while back I had posted about taking down a former Kansas State record walnut tree. The gist of this post was the disappointment I had when the trunk, which was 52" at its narrowest point, turned out to be hollow. Over the last year I've been cutting up the branches, some which were over 30" in diameter, the hollow trunk, and the hollow stump. I made very good money on all aspects of this endeavor. Now I was left with the one last piece of this tree, a very large crotch piece. The crotch was over six feet across at the top so no way would it fit on the mill. It didn't really matter because one ear of the crotch was hollow and the rot progressed into the main stem.

This ruined any crotch figure I might have got sawing in in the normal fashion. I figured I would just chainsaw it up and try and recover some small boards which I hoped would produce some curly figure. I sawed it in half the easy way and let it sit for a couple of days before I got back to it. When I got back to it I stared at it a bit and thought, wait a minute, there a table in that piece, it just needs a little cleaning up. I called a customer of mine and asked if he'd be interested in it. He came out and bought it on the spot and we then proceeded to clean it up on the mill. We had to pull the guides to get the full 36 inches of it through the throat. He's going to route a recess around the hollow part and cover it with glass. And I was right, there is curly figure throughout the piece. This only worked because it was hollow. As it is it's 250 to 300 pounds. If it was solid it might fall through the floor. I slabbed the other half into six slabs and sold them for good money also.