Live Edge Aromatic Red Cedar Table

Thirty five years ago in a small cemetery with many of my relation, the aromatic red cedar trees were losing limbs and breaking head stones. We were given permission to cut these trees. One of the trees in the back of the cemetery was 3' in diameter. Little did we know when we had it on the sawmill, there were hardly any knots in the first 8' of the tree. Dad and I stacked this lumber in an old out-building, slatting it and letting it dry. The plan was to someday make something special with these boards. Over the years we had considered many different projects, but with lumber this special, we were hesitant to use it.

In the past year, I moved to a different home that has a great four season porch. While visiting a few months ago, my Dad said "I think we found a use for those boards". He wanted me to make a table for our porch. Since my parents live a couple hours from me, it was hard to get Dad around very much to help, but we did manage to work on the table together for a while. The top is only two boards that came off the log side by side. The benches are one board each that came from another tree and were side by side in the log. When I was done with the table, I got curious enough that I counted the rings on the end. Near as I can tell, this tree was 100 years old when we cut it 35 years ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did the experience of cutting the tree and working on this with my Dad.