Mindsigh

Table update – finished at last!

Posted by Jerry on October 7th, 2007 — Posted in DIY, Journal, Woodwork

Okay it’s been a while – lots of sanding and two coats of Rustins Plastic Coating then a final sand at 1500 grit and then an organoil wax/oil finish with lots of buffing. But here is the finished table

And it’s a table with a story. Back on 18 January 2003, the Canberra Bushfire – the Great Fire of Canberra came through our suburb without warning. Within hours Canberra lost 563 houses – including five houses out of eighteen in my street, and four lives were lost. Next door neighbour’s house was badly burnt and we lost the garden and fences – and our front door mat – we were lucky.

Our ribbon gum tree out the front was not so lucky, it caught fire about the time the wind changed and put us back in the business of saving the house. The gum tree dominated the yard, but was too far gone to save. So about a fortnight later we had the tree felled – but in the process I located a bloke at Hall with a portable Lucas saw mill. So I got the tree fellers to leave the trunk next to the road and in the afternoon a truck arrived and took the trunk away to to be milled. I spent that Friday at the saw mill learning how to mill my tree into boards.

When I saw the number of boards I thought then that I would make a new dining table from the timber. I stacked and stickered the timber in my shed to dry slowly up until a month ago when I figured that I had some holidays, I had the technology, and the time had come to make a fine dining table.

Hopefully I’ve done justice to the the tree and to what it represents – hope out of a devastating natural disaster.

The Legs are ribbon-gum (Eucalyptus viminaris), as is the main part of the top, and the aprons and breadboard ends are from jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) which provides a nice contrast.

It’s been a lot of work but well worth it to see the finished table 🙂

Cheers
Jerry

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