Slab For A Tea Table

Recently my friend JD came for a visit, bearing a crosscut slab from a cherry tree that fell across his driveway.  He wanted to turn it into a small tea table to hold his cup of morning coffee out on the porch.

I thought I might be able to smooth and flatten it only using planes, but the amount to remove (~3/4″ of very hard end grain) was simply too much.  So, I spent a couple hours sawing to get the two faces coplanar.

After that I did most of the work with my trusty #5 set up as a foreplane, followed by a companion #5 set up as a smoother.

Some vigorous work with my user-made scraper, picked up somewhere along my path, and I was done.

So a few hours of good fellowship and labor it was ready to go home with him for attaching the legs and finishing.  At first he was dismayed at the “washed out” nondescript appearance, but I assured him the rich cherry color would soon return.  Since it will be out on the porch for his morning coffee he will finish it with some thinned polyurethane for the greatest penetration and protection.  I’m awaiting the finished pictures myself.