This old growth douglas fir table measures 39" x 90." The piece of ancient wood was dug up from a log found in the Washington State Olympic rain forest. You can count 380 growth years from one side of the table to the other - the pith of the tree to the outside cambium layer. While working on this project I often contemplated what was happening when it was a young sprout back in the 1620's. While it has a shrinkage crack at both ends, I enjoyed keeping it as big and organic as possible inlaying a wood butterfly to keep it from opening up much more.
2 comments:
I have a couple very large doug fir slabs that came from a downed tree on it's way to the pulper on the Oregon coast. I'm going to turn them into a dining table as well. They are 30" wide by 3" thick and 13' long. The original piece was 30x6x17', but I used those extra 4 feet for legs, etc. It would have been fun to keep it full length as there are no knots, but i couldn't fit it into my dining room. I've worked with a lot of old growth fir in the past, but not on this scale. Even after 60 days in the kiln I'm finding the slab to be very pitchy. Did you run into this? Your table is beautiful! I LOVE old doug fir in these large dimensions. It's a very special piece of wood. We estimate the tree to have been about 400 years old.
Yes, pitch has occasionally oozed, but after 2 yrs it's pretty much stopped. The thicker it is the more there is to stablize. I had the slab for several years before I made it into a table.
It really is fun to relish the old growth, indeed. Think what it was like before the 1933 Tillamook burn. There were 8 - 14 ft. diameter fir & spruce trees 300 ft. tall, commonplace from Gales Creek to the coast.
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