We pulled a cypress log out of a river so that we could build a cool table with it. This tree was felled by settlers a few hundred years ago and then as they were floating the logs down river to the lumber mill this one sank to the bottom of the river. The log still had the original axe cuts in it from when it was cut down. Once we recovered the log from the fallen tree, it was milled into slabs. We had to flatten the slab to to make it a proper surface for building a table. We had the forestry commission age the tree and they said it was at least 1000 years old at the time that it was cut down, which was a few hundred years ago! We built a router sled, and used a router to flatten it since it was WAY to wide to fit through our planer. This video shows the tedious and dusty process of flattening the slab with a router.
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