Riddle me this ....

[RD-Sam]

On second thought, it's a cannon! :banana:

 

[RD-Sam]

Or maybe a stage coach. :mrgreen:

 

[Arnold Ziffle]

Jo, would it resemble the Monitor or Merrimack? Heck of a good riddle.

 

[Jogeephus]

Jo, would it resemble the Monitor or Merrimack? Heck of a good riddle.

I wish, then I could control trade on the Mississippi for a day. Ok, maybe only an hour or so. :lol2:

Merrimack is much longer by about 150 feet. Merimacks weight was a whopping 4500 tons versus its measley 23 tons.

 

[alisonb]

23 tons :shock: -its a tram car or a coach.

 

[Jogeephus]

23 tons :shock: -its a tram car or a coach.

In the beginning but not anymore. I did some serious modifications on it about five years ago. A few will appreciate the challenge this presented. Not sure how much it weighs now but one other person I can manage it alright. If the world doesn't fall apart this morning my plans are to pull it out and move its temporary home about 70 miles from the house and I will be able to get some good pics of it.

 

[chippie]

I have been checking this thread daily. When you mentioned the Romans, I thought of the Trojan Horse.

I am looking forward to seeing your completed project. Our son Eddie is a Civil War re-enactor and a History major at Texas Tech.

 

[Jogeephus]

Our son Eddie is a Civil War re-enactor and a History major at Texas Tech.

My nephew does the revolutionary war re-enactments. He loves it. He was in the movie The Patriot. He also majored in history but now he is in seminary. I think with his background in history his sermons should be very interesting.

Well here is the finished project. Its a coffee table for my son's graduation.

He will be graduating from the air force academy this May and this will be his graduation present from me. (He'll be giving me his sabre at graduation)

The coffee table is made out of a loblolly pine I found while we were doing a harvest in 2005. Latin for loblolly is taeda which in latin means torch. Romans preferred the branches of this tree for torches hence its name. It measured 54 inches at breast high and had 135 feet of clean wood. Based on my calculations this put the tree's weight somewhere around 23 tons. The only way to process the tree was to fillet the tree to a manageable size by removing a good portion of the butt. Even then, its size still required us to haul the tree nearly 150 miles to a specialty mill that dealt with large trees such as this - they loved it. (this mill is no longer in business and Walmart now occupies the site) No other mill would touch it. As for the butt, it was worthless for lumber purposes but I just couldn't see wasting something that has lived for around 145 years so the project began.

The first problem I faced was cutting an even cut off of a log this size. It took several tries but I eventually got one pretty plumb. Next problem was curing it so it wouldn't check. I figured this would take around 4 years. I began soaking it anti-freeze and this was rather expensive. Unfortunately the container sprang a leak without my knowing it and by the time I did notice it the pie had checked twice. I then used a water soluble parafin and coated it good and waited and hoped. After about 4 years I began work on the table. Since its not truely square or weighted, this presented some problems as well but most of these problems were dealt with. I chose to make the legs out of untreated telephone cross arms since they are required to have a tight grain and are mostly heartwood.

As for its little lethal secret, I placed a secret compartment in the bottom of it so he can stash a couple of pistols if he wants. I guess you could hide valuables in it as well with assurance that no one is going to walk out of his house with the table. ;-)

I'm glad its finally finished and I sure hope he likes it. What do ya'll think?

 

[MO_cows]

That is something that is sure to be a family heirloom. Nice work! We could have guessed for YEARS and never figured it out. The stain matched up very well on the different woods of the base and top. Big as that sucker is, I would have guessed it to be even more than 145 years old. But I guess in your "gentle" climate, the trees have faster growth.

 

[chrisy]

Jo that is one nice table, I am sure he will love it and treasure it for years, a good family heirloom in the making, can see many a scwobble on who's going to get it in the future years.
MO_cows if you have the patience and can see all the rings in the photo's count them and you could work out the age of the tree. So I'm told the darker the ring the weter the winter, tree rings can tell a lot about the area.

 

[ga.prime]

Most awesome. That's my kind of project!

 

[Jogeephus]

Thanks for the kind words. I hope he enjoys it for many many years.

Big as that sucker is, I would have guessed it to be even more than 145 years old. But I guess in your "gentle" climate, the trees have faster growth.

I really thought the same thing but it just goes to show how fast loblolly can grow given the right conditions. You can tell a lot about the history of an area by the rings. I once saw a longleaf pie done this way. It was 200 years old but was only 20". The guy who did it typed little historic markers on small pieces of paper and sealed them to the pie so you could look at interesting points in time. I was tempted to do this but I was afraid this might look tacky.

Chrisy, glad to see you back! I missed you and was beginning to worry.

 

[HOSS]

Jo,

Now a gatling gun would look real nice sitting on top of that table :cowboy:

Excellent job. I am really impressed. All this after your wife said you weren't no good fer anything but swilling coronas, shootin hogs and drivin round lookin pretty :lol:

Seriously....that is nice. I'm not much of a drinkin man but that even makes me want to sit around it and help you toss a few back while we swap lies.

 

[curtis]

That's nice Jogee, very nice.

 

[curtis]

That's nice Jogee, very nice.

 

[kenny thomas]

You done goood.

 

[showing71]

Very neat!

 

[Fred]

That's a really nice job, something to be proud of. How much longer do you think that tree would have lived if it wasn't cut? I was talking to a 79 year old man from the timber area of the state the other day. When he was young he worked dynamiting the stumps left from logging the virgin longleaf pine.

 

[john250]

Very, very nice.
Congratulations on the event!

 

[Jogeephus]

How much longer do you think that tree would have lived if it wasn't cut? I was talking to a 79 year old man from the timber area of the state the other day. When he was young he worked dynamiting the stumps left from logging the virgin longleaf pine.

That's a tough call but most pine around here will begin to revert to hardwood from 70 - 80 years if left completely undisturbed. These few were an exception since they were located in a bowl by a spring that was located at the bottom of another topographical bowl which kept their heights equal to the surrounding canopy thus reducing the chance of lightning strikes. Left completely undisturbed I'd guess maybe another fifty years but with the disturbance I would think they would have only made it less than 10.

edit: thanks again. I'm feeling better about it not being wasted time now.