I've been thinking of how to level the tree trunk and I decided since I wasn't exactly sure what to do, I'd grab my husband and go down and take a look at this. Here's today's shop photos:
Originally I had thought to prop up the lowest end of the tree trunk and I tried doing that with 2x4s and wooden wedges and I never really got the top very level:
I also wanted to install wheels underneath the trunk so it could easily be moved for vacuuming or for repositioning. I had some old caster wheels that I thought might work so my husband and I flipped the tree trunk over and temporary screwed the wheels into placed:
And it didn't really work very well. I tried inserting a 2x4 under the lowest part of the trunk:
And this got the top fairly level. But it looked crappy. So we through simply trial and error figured out that if we picked out three points underneath the trunk, we could screw in two 2" caster wheels (2" refers to the distance between the bracket on the wheel and the point of the wheel that touches the floor) along the lowest edge of the tree trunk and one 1" wheel along the highest edge of the trunk, we might be able to get the top of the trunk level enough to place a cup of coffee on it without spilling:
So we removed the larger wheels and replaced them with some smaller wheels:
And it didn't quite work out. The top was still not level enough. So I cut several spacers out of scrap plywood and screwed these in between the wheel bracket and the trunk like this:
The lowest point required an even thicker spacer so I cut out a section of 2x4 and a piece of 1/2 scrap plywood and made another spacer:
And here is everything screwed into place:
And it still wasn't level:
So we inserted another piece of 2x4 underneath the spot that had the 1" wheel and it seems to have leveled out the top as much as probably we're going to be able to get it:
So, after much discussion, since the table is going to be largely stationary, I'm going to declare victory and leave the 2x4 in place for now. I'm going to replace it with a small piece of 4x4 cedar to make this part of the tree trunk a little more stable. I gave the trunk a preliminary coat of polyurethane and left it to dry:
Here is the close up is a shot of a hole that naturally formed in the tree and to prevent it filling up with dust or cat hair or a stray cat paw, I'm going to fill it with concrete and some stones, which I'll do this week.
I'm going to work on the tree trunk for the next several days and I'll post completion photos soon.
Stay tuned,
VW
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