SWMBO came along to a new lumber supplier, and saw this "oval" live edge slab for $50 and insisted building something with it.
First step was to remove the bark. A power washer made short, very easy, very clean work of that. Stripped the bark right off and left a smooth surface without removing any of the interesting live edge detail.
Then, I ordered some square tubing from an online metal supplier, taught myself to weld, and threw this together.
A bit of treatment with a flap disk sander mounted in the angle grinder (and a bit of bondo) and it looked pretty good.
Finish on the slab is BLO, then a coat of 1# dewaxed shellac, then several coats of semi-gloss polycrylic (I was tempted to use something "better" like a EM2000, but $7/qt vs $40/qt...)
Shellac and polycrylic were sprayed in my dusty garage with a $10 hook-to-your-air-compressor spray gun. I would be very interested to hear any critical comments on the quality of the finish, because I'm impressed with how well this product/method worked, but would like to improve if opportunity exists.