My First Live Edge Tables or How I Won an Argument with the Missus

My neighbor had a deseased pecan tree in his back yard that he and a friend cut down and split into firewood.

There was a large crotch that he wasn't able to position on his splitter so it laid out in the weather for months.

I had had my eye on it for quite some time and one day I approached and asked what he was going to do with it.

"Burn it I guess, I can't split it, it's too twisted," he told me.

I asked him if I could have it and he welcomed that idea and helped me load it onto my bush hog.

I didn't have an Alaska mill and I didn't know anyone with a Woodmiser either. I since have found a fella with a mill in the area and had some slabs cut.

I figured I had a steady enough hand to cut it with my chainsaw, so I chalked a few lines and started it up.

My reward was four raggedy slabs and a few pieces that I thought I could make into band saw boxes.

All of these pieces were larger than my planer could handle so I cobbled together a jig to fasten it to my workbench.

With my scrub plane I worked on my upper body exercises for about forty minutes. That stuff was hard!

I sneaked into the kitchen went to the kitchen and got a beer before my wife could catch me cold beverage and took a little breather.

Twenty minutes later I was going at it again! I had worked up quite a sweat and my hand slipped off the ball of the plane and I jammed the thing between my finger and the jig .

Busted my pinkie wide open!

The Missus found me, bleeding into her sink and sucking in air between my teeth, and cussing a blue streak, on account of it hurt like the dickens!

She clucked at me and said, "You think THAT hurts, try childbirth, now quit whining and let me look at what you've done to yourself!"

Now, I didn't think that was fair of her at all. How is a man supposed to know the suffering of childbirth? She liked to bring up the subject and hold it over my head in situations like this too, and I aimed to put a stop to it, right there!

"Hold it right there Missy," I said. "Childbirth ain't nothing like the trials a man can go through and I can prove it too!"

"You can?" she asked.

Now, I had her boys, I made her swear in and I started my cross-examination.

"How many children do we have?" I asked her.

"Two."

"And after the first one was born, who approached me wanting to have another right after the first one was weaned?"

"That would be I," she confessed.

"You may step down. Now, it's my turn to testify!"

"Now," says I, "I could walk out on that street," indicating the road, "and I could asked the first man that walks by if he has ever been whacked in the nads."

She raised her eyebrows at me.

"If he answers in the affirmative, then I would inquire of him," Would you care to have another try at that singular experience?"

She giggled.

"I guarantee you, assuming he isn't a hard core masochist, his answer would be an definite NO!"

She just groaned. She knew my case was solid and she had run out of witnesses!

"Mrs. Knowles, on the other hand," I pointed at her shaking my finger, " not only admitted to the fact that childbirth is not so unpleasant that she would avoid it at all cost but, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, she even planned the proper timing of another incident of the said painful experience!"

"I rest my case, your honor!

"The jury may now leave the room to deliberate!"

She shook her head at me.

"Now, Miss Prissy, I will bet money that, when they return, the verdict will be on my side and you will have to pay restitution, but don't despair," I said, "I'm still willing to resolve the case, even at this point!"

While she was putting an adhesive bandage on my pinkie we negotiated the terms of the settlement, to be paid later that evening after the lights where out and the house got quiet.

She kissed me and sent me back to my shop.

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Now friends, I like Roy Underhill as much as the next guy but after that bad experience with the scrub plane I figure one of his friends should introduce him to a thing called electricity. I promptly hauled myself down to the big box lumber supply center and picked me up one of those fancy electric planes.

Boys, this thing is a gem! It has this little cylinder underneath with 3 sharp blades that whirl around real fast and can fairly turn a piece of the hardest pecan into flinders.

I know, on account of I started out with about a two inch slab and wound up with one about 5/8 of an inch!

It has this little gate thing on top for when you fill up one side of your shop with gerbil bedding, you can flip it over and it will fill the other side with shavings too.

I worked both sides of the first slab until I was satisfied that it was level, then I wiped one end with some mineral spirits to give me an idea of what the finished piece was going to look like.

The spalting in that pecan really popped out!

I used a piece that I couldn't slab from the stump as a pedestal to mount the table top to. I also took the worst of the four slabs and cut cross pieces to fit into notches on top and bottom to stabilize the pedestal and strengthen the top.

I sanded the top with increasingly smaller grades of sandpaper until I finished with a 400 grit. The sides and bottom took considerable hand sanding but finished out well with a 250 grit paper.

I cut bowties at the bandsaw, and positioned them over the central cracks in the surface . Then I outlined them with a fine point mechanical pencil.

Using a series of chisels, I cut just inside the pencil lines to about a 3/4 inch depth, adjusting my hole by repeatedly testing with the bowtie piece. With a piece of 80 grit sandpaper I tapered the bowties and glued them into their corresponding holes.

Be sure to use a piece of scrap wood between your mallet and your bowtie when pounding these home.

....................First Table..................................Second Table

I made three of these tables from the one stump. Two were a very close match and the other I gave to my son.

The tops were secured to the pedestals using 1/4 X 4 inch lag bolts. I drilled two 3/4 inch holes about 3/4 of an inch deep in the top of each table with a forstner bit. Then used a 1/4 inch spiraled drill bit to complete the holes.

I cut 3/4 inch square pegs from a piece of scrap walnut, traced the shape above each hole, and cut the corners out square with a chisel.

On one end of each peg, I used a forstner bit, slightly larger than the lag bolt head, and made a counter sink.

I dropped in steel washers and secured the tops to the pedestals with the lag bolts.

Then I glued in the square pegs with the counter sinks pointed down to cover the lag bolts.

Both bowties and pegs were cut slightly proud of the table top with a Japanese hand saw.

I re-sanded the table tops to 400 grit and finished the pieces with boiled linseed oil.

Oh, I almost forgot, I filled all the cracks with clear epoxy before sanding.

With the scrap piece left from the side of the crotch I made these neat little bandsaw boxes that the wife sold for $150.00 at her last craft fair.

The piece was too large to fit on my bandsaw so I had to cut it into three different pieces to make it work, then reassemble them as three separate units that she sold as a set.

All I had left of that crotch was a little pointy scrap, I threw that in the pit, grabbed a couple steaks and a beer and watched the sun set!

Thanks for reading my post!

CARRY ON!