Drying tree trunks for table tops - tips/advice?

Cut it into planks now and stack it to dry with spacers between the planks, paint the ends of the planks with oil based paint to lessen the cracking at the ends

Drying out a cross sectional slice of trunk without major cracking is difficult but it can be done. The trick is to slow down the drying process, I would cut the slice a few inches thicker than the final size. Immediately wrap the wood in a large plastic bag and store in a cool place. Every two or three days remove the bag, turn it inside out and put it back over the wood. After a month or two depending on the season it should be safe to let it air dry without the bag. the moist atmosphere inside the bag may encourage mould and staining of the wood but you should be able to remove the staining by planeing off the extra couple of inches when the wood is finally dry.
Another more reliable , faster method is to used an immersion bath of polyethylene glycol PEG, but that will be expensive for a large chunk of wood.

mobfromcork wrote: »

Hello all,

I recently moved into a house where there were 3 large, dead beech trees in the garden. We took them all down over the last few days and started sawing them up. Cutting through the trunk of one we noticed that the centre had rotted away and it was home at one stage to a hive of bees as the old dried up honeycomb was still in place.
I'd love to make small coffee table tops using the complete cross section of the trunk as the hole where the honeycomb was is a very unusual shape. I still have one approx 2 foot section of the trunk with this hollow running through it yet to cut (probably with the chainsaw given the thickness). Would I be better leaving this complete section to dry before trying to cut it into slices/sections or would I be better to cut now and leave it dry like that. I understand it will probably crack a bit as it dries.
Thanks for any advice.

Mark

You are fortunate that there is a hole in the middle of the disc, this will go a long way to reducing drying stresses in the piece and gives you a good chance of drying with minimal cracking. As there is mostly end grain exposed it will dry quite rapidly (bad for cracking) though so the plastic bag advice (thanks imakebiodiesel) is good.
Timber shrinks minimally along the grain but shrinks a good deal in the other two directions. If you have observed wood drying in the round before you may have noted the appearance of "radial" cracks. These radial cracks are due to the difference in the amount of shrinkage across the rings as opposed to parallel to them In general timber shrinks about twice as much parallel to the rings than across them (hence the preference for quarter sawn timber for tabletops etc). In your case the hole in the middle will relieve much or the stresses caused by this shrinkage difference.
I wish you sucess
tim

mobfromcork wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice folks. 4 slices of varying thickness drying in plastic bags in the garage now.

No personal experience of this but beware that there will be distortion as the trunks dry out - possibly into a 'mushroom' shape. Some extra allowance on the thickness might be an idea. Planing end grain flat is also a challenge - an electric planer would probably help.:rolleyes: