From uprooted tree to dining room table

Needed a dining room table, wanted solid wood but those things cost $$$$/$$$$. Hurricane Matthew came through and uprooted some trees, and I saw an opportunity. So with some general carpentry skills and a lot of Youtubing, I built a table.

My buddy and I cutting said tree into 9' logs for the mill. If a tree uproots vs snaps, then the wood is usually still good. this red oak uprooted and had other trees to break it's fall, so I assumed the wood was not splintered.

These wet logs weigh about 1000lbs apiece so we had to use some creativity to load them up

The mill charged about $0.30 a board foot for flat sawing the logs. We also took a pecan, walnut, and white oak that all fell from the storm. I paid extra to get them kiln dried.

In the meantime, I needed tools. Craigslist! Found a nice table saw that needed some TLC but I got it dialed in.

Built the base out of southern yellow pine using mortise and tenon joinery. I used SYP simply because the base was going to be painted anyway. Planed and edged all of the lumber. Built a simple jig to control the bounds of the mortises while routing them out.

The mortises before the chisel.

Cut the tenons with a homemade tenoning jig on the table saw.

Fit like a glove.

Coming along...

Everything joined and clamped up using a ratchet strap. Not pictured, added support stringers in the middle using dowels. Also cut a kerf for the table top fasteners to float in.

Time to plane and shape the wood. Did this part at an experienced friend's house.

Skip planed to 1 1/8" thickness. Boards were cut long and I just cut the snipe off. Time to edge using the table saw and a piece of straight mahogany.

Glued and clamped up. Priceless advice time: Tape the cauls and keep the black pipe from making contact with the glue/ wood.

Top and base first meet back in my garage.

Flattened the table by dragging a sheetrock square across the top, pencil marking the high spots, then hitting the high spots with a belt sander. This worked effectively. Other ways to do it: Build a router jig and go back and forth, call a cabinet shop and see if the have an industrial belt sander, rent a floor sander.

Poly stain/ iron acetate/ danish oil and combinations of them. Decided on the iron acetate.

The kiln drying process must have sapped more tannins out of some pieces as this was the result of ebonizing with the iron acetate. Lucked out as the darkest piece was in the middle and it almost turned out symmetrical.

Painted the bottom white and used antiquing wax to highlight the imperfections.

After everthing was placed , I used z-clips to fasten the top to the base. The z-clips were fastened in rows on the stringers and ends perpendicular to the grain of the wood to allow for expansion.

Accented the dowels

Needed it finished by Christmas so didn't have time to build the matching bench/ find chairs. These rental chairs worked out great for Christmas dinner.

Can you spot the doggo snoot or the dormant ficus?

All in all, it was a great experience. The woodworking bug has biten me, and naturally now I have a laundry list of projects- but all the wood I need to do them with thanks to Hurricane Matthew. Next table I build I will try my hand at breadboarding.