Pondering what to do with this chunk of wood...suggestions?

[SteelDust]

I had a fairly large split trunk Douglas Fir on the property that I decided had to go. The two individual trees have already met their fate and await the wood splitter.

This is what remains of the trunk after the two tops were felled. This time of year the bark peels really easy, so I got bored this evening and fashioned myself a bark spud out of a section of pipe. It worked amazingly well...all the bark was off inside of an hour with minimal damage to the underlying wood.

Now....what to do with the thing??? I will be building a large deck this summer and I was thinking that it would make a very interesting deck table "base". I have no carving or artistic skills, so don't even go there...haha.

Any other ideas??? It's about 36" at the base.

Only a 25 year old tree, btw, they grow fast in this country. Some of the growth rings were close to an inch.

To keep it tractor for the projects thread, it is being handled by the fork attachment, loader strains more than with a round bale, so this has to be in the neighborhood of 1200 lbs. Also, notice the impact out in one of the pictures...punctured a tire sometime in the handling of this trunk, the cut firewood, or the limbs...grrrrrr.

 

[Willl]

Slice and dice it for next years heat.

 

[SteelDust]

Slice and dice it for next years heat.

If I can't figure out any creative use for it, that will be it's ultimate use.

 

[aggiehortguy91]

It would make a couple of nice table bases. Better yet, saw it in half longways and make 2 benches. You could grab a couple of the 3-4" branches to use for legs.

 

[Treemonkey1000]

There is a lot of pitch in that beast. If you sliced it length wise it will take a little while for the pitch to finish oozing out. Then you could sit on it. Stand it up at the driveway and put your house number sign. Stand it up out at the driveway and mount your mailbox to it. Make it a very large birdhouse holder. If you have an old car cut the roof out of it and the floor pan. Then put that thing in the middle of the car like it grew there.
Picnic table base with rounds that you cut off as chairs? Have yourself a firepit and cut seats out of it to sit in length wise. The list goes on. Keep us posted.

 

[studor]

Benches for your deck, chainsaw totem pole or carving, garden trellis, birdhouse, signholder, trailer tongue rest, garden centerpiece(pot holder), deer feeder, garden (hollowed out), planks, chair (cut back down from top and use round part for seat) small bridge for pond, and other things like that. If you try and fail, you just have some finer firewood
regards

 

[Charlton John]

Garden centerpiece cut out a bowl like shape in the top, pack in some potting soil and use it as a flower planter

 

[woodlandfarms]

We have a couple of large maples (36 to 50" trunks) that are down. I would like to pick up a chainsaw mill so have been doing some research.

The one cool thing I saw was that a guy was cutting from upper left to the bottom right instead of along the grain or across. Created some beautiful patterns.

 

[easygo]

If you have a way to cut it length wise but not a straight cut. If you cut from near the top starting on one end and cut down towards the bottom on the other end. You can probably cut it like that two or three times at about 3" thick slabs. That will give you some very nice elongated oval looking growth rings. It will look like ovals stacked on each other and the gap between the rings near the ends will bee much larger. After that wait for the pitch to dry, plane it and stick nice legs into it and treat it with some clear coating stuff.
That is what I would try. There could be some very nice pattern in the rings near the forked end.

 

[Danno1]

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FWIW, fast growing wood w wide growth rings is not as strong or as dimensionally stable as the same species w a slow growth rate (tight rings).

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