Last January i saw an old oak tree that had been cut down in our neighbourhood. It looks like it was rotten. Anyways, there was snow all aver the ground still, and the pieces were totally water logged. I called bill and we met up to scavenge what we could. some pieces were way too heavy, but i managed to find some pieces that i thought would be suitable for a new tea tray. a year ago i attempted to make one, and while its really pretty, it’s an utter failure as a tea tray. so anyways, i need a new one. The wood has been drying for almost a year now in bills garage, and its time to start working on it. so lets see what work I’ve done so far.
SO here is the piece. look at the wonderful features it has.
this had a lot of potential.
So to start, we used a regular saw to cut an inch or two into the log.
This was the most gruesome part, since the line had to line up perfectly all the way around, and it would dictate my edge on the final piece. here is bill hacking away at it.
We then used a large swede, or bow saw to cut thru the middle. this was a 2 man operation, and in total the whole process took us probably 2 hours or so. but the final piece turned out great!!
This final piece is about 3 in thick, much nicer for a tea tray. ALl this previous work happened last weekend. so this weekend, i got to work with creating the guide for the router. this is what that looks like.
and a first pass of routing out just the edges ended like this.
the following day i finished routering out the inside. i created a wood board to cover my template, it worked really well.
and with the midde cut out. good start!
It looks so great already. I’m super excited to keep working on this. I’m really glad i got a more powerful router. That wood is so dense and hard. its creating a lot of sawdust as i cut it.
anyways, i shall keep everyone up to date as i continue to work on this!