On my last trip to Tahoe, I found a cool slice of wood I'd love to make into a coffee table...however I have no skills whatsoever to accomplish this. another well thought out plan!

I'm not sure what kind of wood it is, but approx 3 ft diameter by 4 inches thick. The orig owner applied 1 layer of stain and lacquer, but it's still quite rough and I anticipate having to sand it down more thoroughly.

There's also a small fissure in the middle of the wood and I'd like to fill it with a clear resin of some sort. Any thoughts?

Then there's the matter of keeping the bark on the outside surface. I like how it makes the table seem that much more "from nature" but it is quite rough and I think could get quite messy if applying mult coats to lacquer to it. Should I keep it on or grind the bark off?

Then there's the issue of how to create a stable base/legs. I'm guessing a circular base to distribute the support w/o stressing the top wood. I was initially thinking of using 4 thick wooden cylinders ~4-6 inch diameter x 2 ft tall. And I'm not sure how to best fix the legs to the base.

If any crafty minds can help, I'd be so grateful! thx all

ere's the slab of wood as I found it all frosted over (it's currently sitting in my storage room by the water heater to dry out)

Great piece of wood there mate. Lovely to see a bit of nature's best being preserved and used for its beauty eh. I am dead against wood chipping for furniture and stuff so take my hat off to you. I dont know much about what you need to do but I'd be concerned about how fast you remove the moisure as it can lead to splitting and that might be disasterous for you. I googled a bit and the science of timber drying is quite exacting. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying but maybe someone else here will be able to give you some better advice. Good luck.

First, nice find. This was a popular table top creation in the pot smokin sixties. Looks a little like a leaf too.
Dry slow. repeat dry slower. If it was outside for a tyme, you need to slowly take it back to +-fifteen percent moisture content. Leave on stickers so air will get around it and dry evenly.
I made a few of these and I used a boulder as a base and a poured sauno tube concrete base.
If you can get a cabinet shop to let you send it through their Timesaver belt sander you will save hours of time-hince the name. I say peel the bark and wire brush the bark to wood area and you will have a beautiful color combination for a border rather than a messy floor around said table.
You may find a nice trunk cut from a felled tree that makes a good base. A tree surgeon service will give you plenty of cut offs and will have their fellers cut you a nice square piece for a song.
Lots of these tops got poured on varithane finished that looked cheap and tacky.
You could easily get away with a Watco clear and a few good coats of furniture wax.
This may sound strange but do not rule out Bondo for your filler needs and can be stained to blend better rhan you realise.
Do not try to turn this into a work of art let its natural beauty shine through and KISS.

There's a place of Hwy 9 in the Bay area around Felton. I forget the name of the place...something studios. Very impressive!

If you see cracks appearing while drying it dissolve pva wood glue with water and treat it with that. It gets absorbed in to the wood and holds it together. A trick learned from and old restorer.
You can sand it away on the outside later.
After it is dry enough follow the advise given by others here and depending on what you want sand and polish or laquer, etc.
If you ride an SD you should be handy enough to make a table dude!

id stay away from bondo! if its gonna crack you are not going to be able to stop it. id make up some butterfly joints, they are great for stabilizing big cracks and look great if executed properly.
(see: george nakashima - look at some of his work to get a better feel). if that were my piece, id hand plane the top and bottom nice and flat after it was dried, but if you dont feel comfortable then having someone run it through a thickness sander is in fact a good idea.

Yes Yes hand planing and butterfly joints. Please make sure you do not cheat yourself out of quality wood work by using power tools or vendors who specialize in machining wood. Pour the hours into that hunk of cellulose fiber and it will reward you with a place to set your beer down and a place to rest your feet.
Bondo is a filler not a joint stabiliser. There is not an amount of money that you could throw at this piece of wood that will stop it from deterioation, enjoy it while you and it last.
aunatural

thx for the advice! I definitely want this to last a long time. Considering I bought it for $10 I'm more than happy to put down $ where it counts to put this together.

I've been watching the wood as it sits indoors. The small fissure in the middle hasn't changed but reading that dense-ass wiki page I guess I can expect some degree of shrinkage as it dries. Nakashima stuff is gorgeous! Something similar is totally my end-vision for this, but I've got a lot of reading up to do.

Good luck. It is not the reading that you have to do that will matter. It is the understanding and following your reading that will make the differance. Make dammed sure you have a piece worth putting effort into
You cannot make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

just updating:
as anticipated, the drying process is a real tricky biatch. Small center fissure turned into a full-thickness split so the wheel looked like pacman, ack! Secondary concern was that the change of conditions for storage caused extensive mold growth on the untreated surface.

washed it down w/ a bleach solution to kill the mold, wrapped and soaked it immediately to close up the fissure. Amazing how the crack closed up once soaked.

for those who are looking into a similar project involving drying wood, check out Pentacryl. I've ordered some to restart the drying process in hopes that it will go better based on their claims.

next step once sufficiently dried is to sanding it down. Found some useful articles on diy router jigs that I'll be attempting to use. After that, butterfly joints along the fissure, epoxy filler for the rest of it, fine sanding, stain and varnish coats.

Can't wait to see some build pics on this mate!
It'll be a rip snorter when it's done

updates
After soaking the wood to close the fissure and applying several gallons of Pentacryl preservative, maintaining the wood proportions was too much to hope for it seems. Re-drying the wood resulted in the fissure opening once again, but seemingly smaller than previously. Note for future projects, should probably invest in kiln drying method to reduce checks/cracks from developing in the first place.



As cool as it would have been perhaps, the bark had to go. It was harboring a great deal of mold and was simply too unstable to be part of a finished project, so off it went.

I had considered adding a butterfly joint to the fissure, but thought that with a proper base of support, the table would be stabilized against further failure from the fissure. Also, filling the gap with epoxy and sealing it with varnish would stop any dimensional changes from moisture content over the years. I tried to seal around the fissure with the log resting on top of wax paper sheets and a shop blanket...disastrous! Ended up with about 4 cups of fast curing epoxy running everywhere