# Tree trunk table?



## ffjdh (Nov 7, 2010)

My girlfriends uncle recently had quite a few yellow pine trees cut down on his property. I thought it would be neat to make a table top out of one of them. How do I go about seasoning the wood? The tree we wanted to use is cut into about 10ft sections and is 2.5-3' in diameter. Can I cut it down into more manageable sized pieces? How do I keep them from cracking? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Ive never harvested my own lumber.


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## Daren (Oct 14, 2006)

A very popular question, there are a few links within this discussion. http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f2/3ft-oak-disc-16497/

One of the links in that discussion deals with pine. http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f26/what-do-slice-seal-first-4774/



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## ffjdh (Nov 7, 2010)

Daren,
Both those article are about working with rounds, would this still apply if I wanted to cut it into a single wide board for my table top. Something like this:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BRRytZDsnD4/SOq7Pl4XNjI/AAAAAAAAAMU/uoNLcnKiG1E/s1600-h/000_7891.jpg


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## TexasTimbers (Oct 17, 2006)

I think Daren thought you were asking about cookies, for some reason I did when I first saw your title. 

If you can have it milled get it milled a little thicker than the finished size you want. If you're going to mill it yourself with a chainsaw cut it quite a bit thicker than you'll want because of the roughness of the chain milling, so you'll have plenty left to work with after you remove the crookedness and rough marks. 

You'll need to sticker and stack them to air dry them. Thick timber say 7/4 and thicker really needs to be either air dried or sent to a vacuum kiln. Since it's a pine top it isn't likely you'll want to go through the trouble and expense of having it dried in a vacuum kiln so air drying is your best bet. 

One year per inch is always quoted but I don't know how accurate it is. Using the proper joinery, construction methods, and finish it is possible to put the table in service before it is dry. It's a very long discussion though and I don't have time to do it right now. Search for articles on Woodweb for that they have a lot of archived threads discussing the very thing. I participated in several of them myself. 








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## Daren (Oct 14, 2006)

Yea I totally misunderstood. Milling and drying lumber is a piece of cake, especially pine. Either hire a local sawyer to do the work (sounds like you have enough to make it worth while) Or like TT said go at it with a chainsaw. I could probably provide you with contact info for a sawmill in your area if you want to go that route.

Here is some reading on air drying http://www.chilternsaonb.org/downloads/publications/Air_Drying_of_Timber.pdf



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## del schisler (Nov 5, 2009)

ffjdh said:


> My girlfriends uncle recently had quite a few yellow pine trees cut down on his property. I thought it would be neat to make a table top out of one of them. How do I go about seasoning the wood? The tree we wanted to use is cut into about 10ft sections and is 2.5-3' in diameter. Can I cut it down into more manageable sized pieces? How do I keep them from cracking? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Ive never harvested my own lumber.[/QUOTE
> 
> You have to set the pitch in pine or it will keep comming out. It has to be kiln dried and temp up to 160 degree's to set pitch. Here is a link for you to read . Pick out what you want and go from their . good luck http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...fai=Cgbbt1RDXTPbaO4T-zQT2ncW1CgAAAKoEBU_QKMRu


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