Tabletop Progress continued

Started today off with a nice long hike along the river.

Knowing full well the punishment that waits for me at home. After running this hand planer for two or three hours I finally started to see some progress.

 

Once I got the top fairly flat I decide to trim the ends up square so I'm not wasting my muscle power on stuff that doesn't count. Using a level as my straight edge, I clamp it in place to function as the guide for my cut.

Then do the same thing to the other side.

 

Happy accident, the cut goes through one of my dowel rods on one end.

Still have a crown in my center piece so back into the fray with the hand planer. If I wasn't running a shoestring budget on this project, I would just take it to Creative woodworking and pay the 100 bucks to have it run through the slab sander. As it stands,I can't put any money into it, just my back.

 

Looking pretty good after sanding, I'm intentionally leaving some of the weathered gray tones in the two outside pieces. I'm going to do a similar treatment to what I did to the driftwood shelves project.

 Talked my neighbor Ben into helping me move it inside, it wants to stay clamped to the sawhorses in order to stay flat. He's also a carpenter and so is sympathetic to my aims. I'm gonna walk away from this for a few days and let it sit.