Intro to woodworking

Following the big storm we had this summer, we had several trees removed.  The largest was a cedar elm (?) and I noticed the logs had a nice character in their cross sections.  Tianhong and I wrangled two from the curb to our backyard. 

My plan was to build two "stools" for the kids to use in the backyard.  I asked them if they wanted to help, and they seemed really excited by the idea.  Of course my quick and easy project quickly spiraled out of control...

Pressure washing to remove dirt and loose bark

Sanding...

and sanding...

and more sanding.

Distracted by a Dremel with a sanding drum

Apply some spar urethane

Done

When I embarked on this project, I didn't know the challenges of working with green wood.  It started splitting and checking almost immediately.  Rather than controlling it a proper way, I figured I would throw a few coats of spar urethane (which I had a half-used can of) and that would slow the moisture loss enough to minimize the checking.  I expected the finish would look bad pretty quickly, but I had no idea "quickly" was less than 24 hours.  Maybe in a year or two, we will sand it all down again and experiment with an epoxy hole fill and finish.