What about doing your stabilizing and finishing in one shot. I would just give the whole slab a coat of pour on self leveling epoxy. Hit up you tube lots of videos doing live edge slabs. You would encapsulate the rot. Which looks pretty cool to me.
That should have been option 1, but that ship sailed when he dug at it with a screw driver, now we are brainstorming option 2.
However. If he didn't dig at both sides, he might still pull that off and just flip the buggered side down. Only people that would know are the people he tells.
You see a lot of people stabilizing wood on youtube using epoxy and putting it under vacuum, but I don't think that's needed unless it's something that is going to be milled or turned.
I damn sure wouldn't burn it... I might use it for a lot of small projects, but burning would be a shame.
