Arbortech: Create A Half-Log Table

I am so excited to show you a project that I did in cooperation with Arbortech. This is crazy cool. I hope that you love it. Here's what happened. I took a big log, I cut it in half lengthwise, and then I hollowed it.

The half logs became the top of the table and the bottom of the table. All of the hollowing, the carving, the decorating, everything was done with Arbortech's tools. This is a very fun project. Let's see how we got to this point. A friend of mine has a tree service, so I go to his place when I'm looking for logs.

I'm shooting for something that's about 20 inches in diameter, 30 inches long. This ash log is a great candidate. A bunch of chainsaw work needs to happen. First, I'm cross-cutting it, cutting it longer than what I want for the finished table. Next step, I'm ripping it into two half logs.

And with just a little help, it splits open. I've done a little bit of work on the log. I trimmed the ends to clean them up. Now I'm ready to start carving. My goal for this is, think log canoe.

I wanna hollow these out like a hollow log canoe. I'm gonna be doing this work with Arbortech's Industrial Wood Carver. What I wanna do is get the center of the log out, but leave enough rim that I can do some additional carving later on that rim. Ready to cut wood. I'm very impressed with how efficiently the Industrial Wood Carver went through this log.

This log is green, meaning the wood is wet. That's an important aspect. You wanna get after it while the wood is still wet. If it sits and dries like this, it's probably gonna crack really badly. My goal is to remove the pith and then some.

The pith is that bullseye-looking thing in the center of the log. There can be a lot of stress there, and if it remains, it's probably gonna cause cracking. My agenda is to do a bunch of material removal with the Industrial Wood Carver, and then switch to this TurboPlane. So I'm checking to see when do I have a radius here that the TurboPlane will fit into, and then, as I have here, switch to the TurboPlane. And obviously, I'm doing all this work outside under a canopy.

That way I don't have to worry about dust collection. I'm, you know, letting the chips fall where they may. But I am, of course, fully protected with a face shield, dust mask, and hearing protection. This is a roughing step. I'm not looking to produce my final shape yet.

Let's get caught up on the big picture of what's happening with this cool half log table project. Remember when I started this, when I started the hollowing, the log was dripping wet green, 14, 16% Moisture. Once that material was removed, and especially the pith was removed, I let this sit for about two months. Put a fan on it so air was constantly blowing across it. When I meter it today, moisture content is around 6.5, 7.5%.

So it's done a really effective job of air drying. Now I'm ready to come back to work. Come back to work means a couple different things. I'm gonna go back to the TurboPlane, and I'm gonna use that to further refine the inside shape. After I'm where I need to be with that, we're gonna switch to the sanding head, and I'm gonna clean up that inside shape.

Let's talk about bark. When I'm doing projects like this that have bark on them, my approach to this is, if the bark is already iffy, I wanna get rid of it. I don't want this falling off in my house or somebody else's house if this is for a customer. So if it looks like it's probably gonna come off anyway, I'm gonna take it all off. I'm gonna be doing this work with Arbortech's Power Chisel.

This is crazy cool. A number of different chisels can go in here. When I run this, it's like a little jackhammer, and you'll hear it in a second. And what that's doing is it's impacting the chisel so that it's doing the work for me, instead of me having to constantly lean on a chisel. So I'm gonna start my bark peeling process with that.

I'm gonna get all this bark off of the outside, and then we'll be ready to flip over in a little bit and come back to the inside. Let's talk a little more about my drying process. I've got a small kiln set up, and that's what allowed this to be dry in just a couple months. You wanna make sure that your half log is dry and stable before you launch into these next steps. And look at how easily the Power Chisel peels that bark off.

I am so impressed with the work that that Power Chisel did, and how easy that made it to skin the bark off of this log. Let's take cleaning this up a step further. In order to do that, I have got a wire wheel in the power carving unit, and that wire wheel is gonna do a couple things. Anything that's left on here that's loose, it's gonna knock off. Also, it's just gonna excavate down into the grain just a little bit more, and it's gonna do a really nice job of cleaning this up.

I'm gonna take advantage of us being upside down on the bench here in order to do another thing before it gets flipped over, and that is I wanna generate a flat spot here, and that's gonna accept the base that's gonna go onto this table. More on the base in general later. But where I'm at is I have got the TurboPlane in, and with the TurboPlane and this shroud, I can adjust the shroud to control how much TurboPlane is exposed or how little. The benefit to that is I can get really good control of the cuts, and the shroud kind of helps act like a stabilizer, so when you're trying to flatten something, this makes flattening with the TurboPlane really, really easy to do. So basically, I want a center section here that's way flatter than it is right now.

As a starting point, I'm knocking down the high spot right there in the center of the log, and making the resulting flat spot bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And because we're after flat, it's worth checking it with a straight edge to make sure it is. This looks great. That's given me what we want for a flat spot here, so now we're ready to flip over and go after the inside again. Here's what's happening.

Back to the TurboPlane, and what I'm doing now, remember, this is a lot drier than it was when I did round one. So I'm further refining the shape, evening out some of the highs and lows from round one. And remember, too, I wanna leave a rim, and on this rim, that's where you're gonna see the power chisel come back into play. So the rim and the center section, I still have to deal with that at some point. But for now, what I really wanna concentrate on is working with the TurboPlane to just get this excavation to where I want it before I start sanding on it.

What we've got going here is a big concave. So when you're doing work like this, like me, you can take advantage of the SpheroPlane. Now, in this case, I'm concave. The SpheroPlane will actually handle concave and convex. So with this setup, the way it works is that, again, we can dial the shroud up and down.

And when the cutter projects past the shroud, I can do concave. When I reverse that, when the shroud is past the cutter, then I'm set up for convex. So basically, what I'm making here is a big bowl, and it's nice with that smaller diameter cutter. And again, with the guidance of the shroud, that gives me a nice consistent cut. With the smaller diameter cutter, I can get into a smaller radius as I'm concaving this, that a verb, gonna look like this.

So essentially, I roughed this out, taking advantage of what the TurboPlane could do. Now I'm finessing it some more to refine my shape using the SpheroPlane, and we're sneaking up on being ready for sanding. The S word, sanding. I gotta say, Arbortech makes this pretty simple because they've got a sanding disc that is hook and loop, so that makes changing abrasive very, very easy. Great dust collection.

I am taking off a lot of material here with this grit, and you can see that there's nothing airborne. It's all ending up in the vacuum. Also, keep in mind, the SpheroPlane, we can remove the cutter and swap it for an abrasive disc, also hook and loop, and use that to sand the contours of the project, still taking advantage of the dust collection we get from the shroud. So smaller diameter's gonna fit into a tighter curve, and I've got dust collection. So between this sanding disc and this sanding disc, I have got a lot of available options here to get this concave sanded.

That's what I'm gonna do. I'll tell you what, I have looked at this grain numerous times, and I love it more every time. I can't wait to get a coat of finish on this eventually, because it's just gonna pop. It is gonna be so dramatic. So for me, what I'm doing is sanding out any machine marks left by the TurboPlane and the SpheroPlane, and making this a nice, smooth, contiguous surface.

More of that. This is the last of the finish sanding happening to the top of the table, and here's your first look at the base of the table. This is the other half of the log. I cut it four inches shorter than the top of the table. I went through all the same procedures with this half log, hollowed it, peeled off the bark, allowed it to dry, and created a flat spot.

What I'm doing now is drilling for three-quarter inch dowels that'll connect the top and the base. And yes, I very, very, very carefully measured and put tape on the drill to make sure I wouldn't punch through the hollow in the top. The setup here allows the drill bit to go just a little bit into the bottom of the top. These are bowl calipers, and I'm using them to see how thick the wood is right here, and I'm gonna use that in order to establish how deep can I safely drill with this drill bit to make sure I don't accidentally punch through. The key now is to allow the drill bit to follow the angle of the hole that was drilled in the previous step.

I'm using that small dowel to make sure I've got glue on the walls of the hole, then driving in the three-quarter inch oak dowel. The opposing angles of the dowels basically act kind of like a dovetail joint, making it impossible, once the dowels are in, for the top and the base to separate. After the glue dried, I cut the excess dowel off, sanded everything flush. I love how this looks, and everything that's been done so far is bringing us to this point. So big picture, a piece of glass is gonna go over the top of this.

This top rim then has to be made level and in plane. One thing I did is I added leveling feet to the bottom. So that helps in a couple of ways. One, if when you make this table, if you're not able to get the rim on that bottom half log perfectly flat and coplanar, having five feet on it gives you just individual points of contact instead of the whole rim having to touch the floor and not rock. So it makes that easier.

The other thing I did with those leveling feet is I adjusted them a little bit to control how much do I have to take off the top to get this to work. So then, once I had those adjusted, I grabbed a ruler, and measuring from the floor, in this case the stools, I measured at what's the shortest point. Where is it closest to the floor? That line became the limiting number, that measurement became a limiting number, to then mark that out here, here, here, here, here, here. So I've got lines equidistant out from the floor on the four corners and across that center section right there.

That gets us to We're back to the turbo plane, and remember that especially with the shroud on, this makes it very easy to level stuff out and give us good dust control. So next step is gonna be a bunch of machining in order to get all of these lines in plane with each other. One of the things I'll be doing is grabbing a level and doing this, and then just checking across here to see where I'm at. So I have two goals, get the top of this parallel to the floor, and get the rims and the center section in plane with each other. I really like the way the shroud acts as a stabilizer, as outriggers to help keep the turbo plane flat.

And when we're trying to get this one continuous line all the way across and the rim in plane this way, that's where that really pays off. So next thing, I'm gonna quickly lay the glass on here just to make sure everything looks hunky and dory, and then if it does, it looks good so far, I'm gonna put the sander back on, and I'll just quickly sand these surfaces down, and then we're gonna be ready for a very cool next step. It's looking really great. I've done a couple of tests with the glass to make sure everything is sitting flat, is in plane. It is.

So very fun. Here's the next part. Remember the power chisel from bark peeling? I'm using it again, and I'm gonna use this to add some interest across the rim here. That's why I left this rim so wide, talked about that a long time ago.

So let me do some layout. And then we'll do some carving. On that layout, I'm not trying to get it absolutely perfect. I'm trying to just get it a little more consistent than maybe I could do by eye. So now, with a V cutter and the power chisel, I'm gonna follow my lines.

That is amazing. Same process on that side. I love that detail. I am going to do a little bit more finish sanding on this, and then come back when I'm ready to put oil on this. That grain is gonna pop, pop, pop.

There was an audible while you were gone. My friend Ernie suggested these random cross hatches, and I like that a lot. It breaks up that pattern. So I added those using the power chisel. Next step, let's get some finish on here.

My finish, finish of choice today is boiled linseed oil. It's gonna really look great against this ash. This mix is 25% Mineral spirits, 75% Boiled linseed oil. That is gonna help, by diluting it, it's gonna help it soak in a little bit more. And then as I work on this, I'll get a top coat that's pure boiled linseed oil.

But I have been waiting for this a long time. Here we go. Oh, my gosh. So the way the oils work as a finish is I'll brush it on, let it sit a minute, wipe the excess off the surface so that there aren't any puddles on there, and then as needed, apply an additional coat. I am, I wanted to do this first 'cause I wanted to see it, but every square inch of this needs to get oiled, including flip it upside down and do the base.

So I'm gonna take care of that, and when you come back, you are gonna see a crazy, cool table. This is so crazy cool. Man, I love how this came out. So I added rubber glass bumpers to the rim, and that's what the glass is sitting on. Just a big glass square that's covering the half log.

This project came out so nice, and that moment when the oil hit the crotch of the wood here and that grain popped, it's absolutely beautiful. And of course, the tools that made this happen, Arbortech's Power Carver, the Sphero plane, the power chisel. What a great mix of tools to make this work work. I love how this table looks.