I have a large-ish stump from a fallen tree, and I’m going to make it into a table - keeping it roughly in its current form, but squaring top and bottom. Is there a member with any experience with this type of project?
Just a piece of advice. You will want to wait till it has dried, completely. It will weight much less, and will “tend” to not check (split) on you.
Were you going to use the stump as a base for a tabletop, or carve out the sides to reveal the tabletop?
I plan to use the stump as the base of a table.
2 areas of consideration for now, and I’d appreciate any thoughts you have:
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It too heavy to move under a cover just now (it just came out of the ground). In order to get it dry, my thought was to leave it outside and cover it with a tarp on rainy days.
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Also, I was thinking of power washing the root side to remove as much dirt as possible.
Powerwashing is a good idea, the less dirt impacted around the roots, the faster it will dry. So powerwash first, and cover to keep it from rain, later. You might want to remove some of the smaller roots and such. When you cover it, lay it on a side, keeping as much of the roots, and more importantly, the open end of the trunk, exposed. It will dry out through these areas. It is best to raise the whole thing off the ground, on 2x4 boards or bricks/blocks, so you don’t promote rot. Leave the cover as loose as possible, the more air circulation, the better.
Peace, Wolf
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My son and I made one from a cedar stump and a glass top a couple of years ago. Came out great. Getting the top and bottom parallel was the most difficult part. We ended up flattening the bottom by eyeballing it though I later saw an article where they hung the stump and used a laser level to mark all the roots at the same elevation. After leveling the bottom we set the stump on the ground used two pieces of thin plywood where the width of the plywood was the intended final height of the base by 4’. We attached cross supports and cut pieces away from the bottom of the ply so we could snug it up to the main trunk with intact edges of the plywood on the ground. Then we use the top edge of the plywood as a saw guide for our chain saw to cut the top parallel to the ground. In the end we added some blobs of clear silicon in 4 or 5 spots, topped them with wax paper and set the glass in place. Once these hardened the silicon eas effectively rubber pad all level to the bottom of the glass even though the stump itself was not perfectly flat… chainsaw and all…
Good luck!
Clay
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Thank you for sharing your project. Do you have any photos of the process?
I have a large-ish stump from a fallen tree, and I’m going to make it into a table - keeping it roughly in its current form, but squaring top and bottom. Is there a member with any experience with this type of project?
1 Like