Just a simple table built for a friend. A special project for him and me, as he planted the tree with his father in 1957, in Jackson, Missouri. The tree was cut about 10 years ago and sawn into lumber. He took half of it and kept it dry for years. A few years ago, he had someone rough plane the wood to just a bit less than 13/16ths. Unfortunately, it was not very flat to start with and most of the boards had a bit of twist.

I was lucky to find five boards that looked well together and made up a top of about 39". I was able to get one side planed smoothly enough to glue up for a flat surface. It was challenging in that the middle board was quite twisted. Fortunately, it was the only board that was left at a full 1" thickness. I ripped it in half and jointed it relatively flat, but it was still twisted some. A lot of stress later, I finally got a square edge all the way along both sides.

The solid 3" square legs used up a lot of lumber as they were made from a total of 7 pieces of wood, all jointed and planed flat to glue up perfectly. A carefully placed chamfer hides the glue joint where the edges were faced with a thin piece. All of the aprons were doubled up as well, spanning 84 inches at 3" deep.

I filled the knots and cracks in the top with several applications of West Systems epoxy tinted dark. Lots of lessons learned in leveling these areas, but I think I have it down now.

It is finished with Waterlox satin everywhere except the top. I tried three times to get the final finish to dry properly, but when I finally did, I think the flattening agent separated out leaving a weird pattern in the finish when dry. I decided to go to my favorite finish for cabinets. I ended up sanding the finish off entirely four times...the last after I sprayed the 3rd coat of ML Campbell's Envirovar Satin conversion varnish and left a couple of dry spots. I finally did what I should have done the first time and built a temporary spray booth and laid down a very nice coat of finish. I did have to tint the first coat with Transtint Golden Brown to match the rich color imparted by the Waterlox.

Very happy with how this came out especially with the challenge of using thin lumber. Sorry for the less than professional photography. It is amazing to me how sunlight brings out every color in air dried walnut.

Thanks for looking. Any suggestions or criticisms are welcome.

Thanks, Dan

IMG_0808.jpg IMG_0810.jpg IMG_0815.jpg IMG_0816.jpg