Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Oak slab question - wood working

Sure upsets the anal retentive types tho.. haha

Around here that would get burned.

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.

Beat the ever loving schit out of it with a chain until it's all solid wood then stain/burn/seal to taste.

^^^this^^^

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.

Ask the neighbor for about 30-40 more and you can cook some pork shoulders. lol

Like I do with that stuff.
$15 a bundle 😄

Cheap enough. That bundle here is 100 bucks.

Not necessarily. I think I've got some options. Y'all have expanded my thoughts on it.

I got a bunch of tags to notch, but afterwards, maybe February, I'll start this project.

I was going to show a pic of a fireplace mantle we put up out of a similar looking hunk of black walnut (I think from looking. My daughter sourced the plank) 2 inch slab sawn from the middle of a twenty inch tree. One side was ripped square to lay up against the fireplace. The other side is raw with a bit of bark left.

But I absolutely can not get cell phone or camera pics to upload to the 'Fire anymore. They just refuse to go.

I would use a wire wheel on a hand grinder, go with the grain. That would keep the live edge look. Make sure you use a soft wheel, and wear safety glasses! I built lots of burlwood and live edge tables, for waterbed stores in the late sixties and early seventies! Made lots of dollars as a side business! My records show 186 tables in 1970! Mostly redwood burls.

Live edge is worth saving in my opinion. Cracks....fill 'em or not.

That looks like firewood to me.

Only thing I'd add is I'd find a local shop with a time saver and pay them run it through that. I think it would be a great slab bench or coffee table.

George Nakashima put paid to the notion that cracks, knots, and live edges needed to be eliminated. Were it mine I would hog all the loose stuff off the edges and then burnish what remained with a dead soft wire wheel followed by hand polishing. Fill the knot hole with clear epoxy, and stick a couple bow ties into the seasoning crack as the OP suggested. Flatten the whole works and start varnishing.

Couple more of my stool samples.....



Not far from being a potential coffee table, just needs a wider slab.

Hey, no one wants to see that

-sniff-

I see what you did there!

Had a guy from the neighborhood ask if he could dump a few big white pines in my hollow a couple of weeks back.
I got to looking at them and thinking.......
Decided to make a couple of benches for the Tenn house.
Going to let them air/sun dry all winter under roof.

Bench seat and first slab for bench with backrest: