Drying American Beech

[adkterp]

We just cut down a very large american beech tree in our yard. We have four cross sections of the trunk that we would like to make into tables. They are about 5 inches thick (we'd like to sand them to about 2 inches) and about 3 feet in circumference. So far we have not done anything to them. We are storing them in our garage, with planks of wood underneath and between them to allow air circulation.

Can you please tell me the best way to dry the wood without it cracking? Also, does anyone have any suggestions about a type of finish to use to bring out the beauty of the wood? Thank you very much!

[Tom]

There are two things you can do.  One is to ignore them and come back next year and see how they did.  The other is to pray a lot.

Cookies, rounds cut from logs, are inherintly unstable.  The reason is that the distance shrinking wood has to travel on the outside is much greater than the distance it must travel on the inside.  It's like a man who eats apple pies every day for a year and tries to wear the same shirt.

The best that can be done is to dry it super slowly and hope that mold or mildew don't attack it.

There are techniques for repairing  cookies though.  One that I've heard is to have more than one cookie cut from adjoining pieces of trunk so that the grains are the same.   Score the cookies with a saw in different places to get them to crack on the score.  After they have dried, cut out the scored piece in the shape of a wedge and replace it with a matching piece from one of the other cookies.

[SwampDonkey]

There liable to check real bad in that form and them checks will look like slices of apple pie have been removed.

[Rockn H]

Seal the ends with Anchorseal and keep them out of the wind and heat.  Of course then mold may be a problem, but you have to slow down the drying process as much as possible.