So, no more excuses and onto the final part of the table, the top. I have selected two wide boards and one narrower one, which hopefully will make a nice looking surface. The only boards wide enough were cut from the centre of the tree. This of course gives plenty of shakes and knots and weird grain patterns. It also makes for some heavy cupping, bowing and twisting in the boards. They are 5cm thick and I want about 4cm, so I should have enough meat to reach a flat surface despite the crooked nature of the boards. This also means a LOT of handplaning.
As you can see, the boards are really overpowering my punny little 6 feet bench. Not only my bench looks small under these 2.10 meter long monsters, the shop reaches its limits too. I quickly learned to pull the bench out of its corner, so I can reach all around. First removing most of the bump on one side with the German scrub plane (agressive little beast). Then I follow up with the foreplane to get something like flat. Then turn the board over and flatten the show surface.
I spent most of yesterday to reach this point. In the picture it doesn't look half as good as in reality. That weird greeinsh streak through the middle is the centre of the tree, but it isn't so garish as it looks like here. Under a coat of oil it even looks nice!
One bummer. My elbows gave out. At night it was really painfull. So I give the project a rest for a while, maybe even seek some medical assistance. We are on holliday all next week, so rest shouldn't be too much of a problem.
That is a nice looking chunk of timber. It should make a beautiful table.
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