Ask This Old House

Kevin: On "Ask This Old House," our experts travel across the country to answer questions about your house.

Today -- If a tree falls in the woods, what would the team at "Ask TOH" do?

Find it, mill it, and transform it, of course.

Tom and Nathan team up to turn a fallen tree into a beautiful custom bar top.

And it's a wrap on Season 21.

The team comes together to celebrate another great year of "Ask This Old House."

Jenn: Whoop!

Whoop!

Kevin: That's all coming up next on "Ask This Old House."

Nathan: So that one fell that way.

Jenn: Yep.

Nathan: Then this one fell.

Kevin: Good morning, Nathan.

Hey, Jenn.

Nathan: Good morning.

Jenn: How are you?

Did you know this guy has a Christmas tree farm?

Nathan: A little tiny one.

Jenn: Little baby farm.

Kevin: A Christmas tree farm?

Look at all of them.

When are those gonna be mature?

Nathan: About six to nine years, those will be ready.

But I just lost one of them.

This big red oak tree just fell on top of all my Christmas trees.

Jenn: So that's an issue.

So for cleanup, normally you -- Well, first of all, did you hear it fall?

Nathan: I did not.

No.

Jenn: Sorry.

Nathan: No.

I can confirm I did not hear it.

Jenn: So, for cleanup, typically you would hire a service to come in, cut off all the limbs, maybe cut the logs into nice chunks if you're gonna keep them or even help you put it into firewood.

But I know you have a chainsaw.

Nathan: Yes.

And my labor is very cheap.

I have a chainsaw and I have a tractor.

I was able to cut everything down, chip up the brush for my Christmas trees, firewood to the side.

But it left me with these massive red oak logs.

Kevin: You're a wood guy, so you can't throw it out, right?

You're just gonna stare at it for years, wondering what to do.

Jenn: Your dad wouldn't let you throw it out either.

Nathan: It's sitting there in a pile, waiting to get worked.

But I was thinking about slabbing it down and trying to make something out of it.

Kevin: That's not a bad idea.

That looks like some... Nathan: Hey, Pops.

Tom: Hey.

Did I hear oak slabs?

Kevin: Oh, my gosh.

Did your Spidey senses go off?

Tom: I just happened to hear it when I was coming down the hall.

Kevin: That's unbelievable.

Nathan: I lost a big red oak tree.

Tom: Yeah.

What's the plan?

You can't find it?

Nathan: Well, no.

[ Chuckles ] It's somewhere.

So I'm gonna slab it down, but I'm not sure what I want to make yet.

What do you think?

Tom: [ Inhales sharply ] Red oak?

Make a nice bar top out of that.

Kevin: Nice.

Make a thick one, four inches or so.

Tom: Three to four inches thick.

Two to three inches.

Anywhere in that.

Two to four inches would be good.

Nathan: I know a guy with a portable band-saw mill.

He's gonna come over, and we're gonna slab them down.

I can bring a slab in.

What do you think about the legs?

Kevin: Hey, I got legs.

They used to call me Oakie.

[ Laughter ] Tom: I'm surprised they even called you.

We need legs that are dependable.

Let me think about the legs.

Nathan: All right.

I'll go slab these down today with my buddy.

And when they're ready, I'll bring something in.

Tom: Sounds like a plan.

Kevin: And then these legs and those legs will come over with the beer so we can drink at your bar.

Jenn: Yep.

We promise that.

Kevin: How's that?

Tom: That sounds like a plan.

Nathan: So, as Jenn was saying, typically someone would hire a tree service to come in and clean up the tree and all the debris.

But as a carpenter, I want to save as much of this red oak as I can and reuse it for other jobs.

I have a chainsaw, and I have a tractor, so I can move the pieces around, but I don't really have the ability to slab them down or cut dimensional lumber.

But I do have a friend, Mike, who has a portable band-saw mill who's agreed to come over to my house and help me make some dimensional lumber, slabs, or whatever we want to cut out of it.

He's on his way there, and I'm gonna go meet him at my house.

Hey, Mike.

Mike: Hey, Nathan.

Nathan: Good to see you.

Mike: Good to see you, too.

Nathan: Thanks for coming.

Mike: Yeah.

What have you got?

Nathan: So you can see here this big stump.

I lost a big red oak last year in a storm, and I've already chipped up all the brush for wood chips for my Christmas trees.

I took all the limbs and cut them up for firewood.

And that left me with some of these massive red oak logs here.

Mike: Yeah.

Those are a good size.

Nathan: I definitely don't want these to go to waste.

I was talking to Tommy.

We were thinking about doing a bar top or something like that, so probably slabbing it down.

But there's also a lot of material here, so maybe we could also do some dimensional lumber.

Mike: We can do that.

You want to check out the mill?

All right, Nathan.

So this is the sawmill.

Nathan: Oh, this thing's massive.

Mike: Yeah.

It's got a throttle bar here.

When you squeeze this throttle in, it speeds up the blade, and it'll start turning on the water.

Nathan: So it's just water?

That's it?

Mike: It's just water, but it keeps the pitch off the blade and it keeps the blade cool as it's running through the log.

Then we have a measuring system.

That tells us what the depth of the cut is gonna be for each cut.

We can change that by cranking this handle up or down.

Nathan: That's really smooth.

Mike: Yep.

And he has different-sized scales on here, so I can do quick measurements for one inch, two inch, and so on so we can make quick cuts.

Nathan: Very nice.

Nice and accurate?

Mike: Yeah, very accurate.

If we come around to the front, we can take these guards off and we can check out the inner workings of the system.

Nathan: Oh, nice.

Mike: Yeah.

It's just a band saw that's horizontal, really.

Nathan: A little bigger than the one in my shop.

Mike: Yeah, just a little bit.

The blade's pretty fat, too.

Nathan: Oh, wow.

Look at that.

Mike: You rotate this, and that gives you an idea of what it's doing as it happens and comes through these guides.

Keeps the blade right in place.

Nathan: Nice.

Mike: Not a lot of movement.

And then we come over here, and you can see all the jacks.

The jacks are meant to level the mill.

Nathan: So you individually went around and adjusted each one.

Mike: Yep.

And we got it all calibrated in.

Then you got the log dog here.

You put pressure on that, and that's like our table-saw fence.

That's gonna keep it square the rest of the cut.

You want to go grab your tractor and we'll get started?

Nathan: Yeah.

Mike: Let's do it.

We can fire this thing up.

Nathan: All right.

So, what kind of safety gear do we need for this?

Mike: For safety gear, we need our safety glasses.

Definitely ear protection, because the motor gets pretty loud.

And the other important thing is making sure that we don't stand on the sides of the mill, because blades could break, and it's just not a safe place.

You don't want to be anywhere near the blade when it's operating.

They're getting heavy, buddy.

[ Laughs ] Let's roll it.

We got some stickers down, and those stickers are gonna create a gap to let the air flow underneath the wood so that way, we get better drying.

Realistically, every inch of wood, you need a year to dry if you're air-drying it.

Over the next two years, as it starts to air out, you might see some shrinking.

That's just natural, the way that the wood's growing and expanding.

It's like when you're working in the houses and doing trim.

You're gonna see those joints contrast and expand.

Now we're gonna roll this over and get it ready for the next side.

We're gonna release these.

Pull the log towards us just a little bit.

Nathan: I'm not tall enough for this job.

Mike: [ Laughs ] Yeah.

There you go.

We're gonna do this at the same time.

Nathan: Yeah.

Mike: Ready?

One, two, three.

Nice.

[ Blades whirring ] Nathan: Man, this looks awesome.

Thanks for your help.

Mike: Yeah.

It came out good.

Nathan: So you said one to two years for air drying?

Mike: Yeah.

The rule is an inch per year.

These are about two inches thick, so you're gonna have to wait a little bit.

Nathan: Or I could take it to a kiln?

Mike: You could if you're trying to do something with it sooner.

They'll take it and put it in some type of storage unit, crank up the heat, and dry it just right -- not too dry, because that will warp it.

Nathan: And they're gonna charge me a couple bucks.

Mike: Get charged a little extra.

Nathan: We'll have to see what we do.

I appreciate all your help, man.

Thank you.

Mike: Let's back up.

Nathan: All right.

Kevin: Hey, Tommy.

Tom: Hey.

What's going on?

Kevin: Not much.

Tom: See Nathan down there?

Kevin: I did not.

You looking for him, huh?

Tom: Yeah.

He's supposed to be bringing an oak slab.

Kevin: Ooh.

Slabs.

Tom: Yeah.

We got a project.

Kevin: No.

Can't help you.

Speaking of work, though.

Tom: What are these guys doing?

Nothing?

Kevin: Not much work.

Tom: What's going on?

What are you guys doing?

Slacking off?

Mark: We're never slacking.

Jenn: We don't slack, Tommy.

Kevin: Did we not get invited to a birthday party or something?

What is this?

Mauro: It's a game.

Jenn: It's actually the headband game.

You want to play?

Mark: We're glad you're here.

Mauro: We need more players.

Kevin: I'll bite.

What's the headband game?

Richard: Let me explain it.

Headband game.

We break into two teams.

One member of the team that goes first will put a headband on, draw one of these cards without seeing it themselves.

Their other team members will try to give clues.

You have to guess it in one minute.

If you do, you get a point.

If not, we get the point.

So, Tommy, you're on our side.

This will be the mature side, the grown-up side.

Tom: I get the pink one?

Jenn: I got that one for you.

Richard: Actually, Mark.

Jenn: Ready, set, go.

Kevin: Okay.

This is something Heath uses all the time.

And he wants to know what something is measuring, so he -- Mark: Tape measure.

Kevin: But he's an electrician, not a carpenter.

Mark: Good point.

Kevin: So he would use a what measure?

Mark: That was excellent.

Richard: Already said "measure."

Mauro: Heath will put that on something on the electrical panel.

It tells him something.

Kevin: Guess, Mark.

Mark: I'm trying.

Mauro: Come on, man.

Kevin: Put it in.

Lights up.

Mark: Okay.

Mauro: Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Mark: Wire.

Richard: That's a minute.

I'm only kidding.

Jenn: You got 30 seconds.

Kevin: What do you do to wire to find out if it's live?

Mark: Live wire... Kevin: How do you tell if it's live or not?

Mark: You zap it.

Kevin: No.

How do you tell if it's live or not?

Oh, my God.

I'm gonna zap you with electricity right now.

Mark: Uh... Kevin: What do you do?

What do you touch to measure to see -- It lights up and says -- Mark: A poker, Kev.

Kevin: No!

An electrician uses it!

Jenn: Five seconds.

Kevin: Rhymes with "coltage mester."

Tom: Three... Mark: Voltage measurer!

Richard: No!

You're out.

You don't have it.

Mauro: We win.

We win.

[ Cellphone chiming ] Kevin: Oh!

Mark: We got it!

Mauro: We win!

Mark: We got it!

Mauro: [ Laughing ] Richard: A "coltage wester"?

Mark: Yeah.

Kevin: Rhymes with!

[ Laughter ] Richard: A "coltage wester"?

Kevin: Heath will verify.

Heath will verify.

Richard: Tom, you want to go?

Jenn: You pick.

Kevin: Wait.

For Tommy, can I just say you look adorable.

Jenn: Adorbs.

Richard: Pink is good on you.

Tom: Pink is good.

Richard: Good luck.

Tom: Is it upside down?

Jenn: Oh!

Richard: Yeah.

Kevin: Time starts.

Tom: It's upside down?

Kevin: Whenever you want.

Jenn: He bit your finger yesterday.

Tom: Dog.

Jenn: What's his name?

Tom: I don't know.

Jenn: Oh, dude!

Oh, my God!

[ Laughter ] Tom: How would I know his name?

Richard: So there was a whale once... Tom: Yeah?

Jenn: Yeah.

Tom: Moby?

Jenn: Yeah!

Whoop!

Whoop!

Tom: Wow.

Jenn: Very, very... Richard: Boy, that didn't take long.

Kevin: All right.

You got the stopwatch going?

Jenn: Ready?

Set.

Kevin: Oh, okay.

Here we go.

Pieces of wood on it to hold them while you're cutting.

Two of them on either side.

Mark: It'll say this to you.

[ Whinnies ] [ Laughter ] [ Whinnies ] Kevin: That's not helpful!

Mark: What?

What am I doing right now?

Kevin: A carpenter uses them to hold the wood.

Richard: Boy, these guys are really bad at this.

Mauro: It's a sawhorse.

Mark: Thank you!

Mauro: I'm good!

Kevin: Which, if you didn't know what a sawhorse sounds like... Mark: Thank you.

Kevin: What does a sawhorse sound like?

Mark: A sawhorse sounds like 11 seconds.

Tom: Hey, I would have gone with... Mark: [ Whinnying ] I could have done that.

Kevin: I would do anything to be part of this one.

Mark: That's exactly what I'm saying.

Kevin: Anything to be part of this one.

Jenn: Tom Silva?

Richard: That's a good shot of me, too.

Kevin: You guys cheating?

Jenn: No, we're not.

Kevin: Shuffle them.

Mauro, shuffle them.

Mauro: Of course I will.

Kevin: Enough of this.

Richard: Look up my sleeve.

Look.

Look.

I do not have any cards up my sleeve.

Mauro: Oh!

Tom: Mark is so smart.

Mark: Think genius.

Kevin: Um... Mark: Like I'm so powerful, all the lights would go on.

Kevin: You're magic?

You're God?

Mauro: You turn on the switch.

Mark: Let him keep going.

That was great.

[ Laughter ] Tom: Where have you been?

Nathan: I actually don't know what to say.

What are you playing?

Jenn: It's the headband game.

Nathan: Fixed.

Jenn: You want mine?

Nathan: No.

No.

I don't want to partake in this at all.

Richard: All right.

What are you guys doing?

Tom: We got to go work on a slab.

Jenn: What kind of slab?

Nathan: Nice red oak slab.

Just had it milled down.

Jenn: Oh.

The one from your yard.

Nathan: It's all dried out.

Ready to turn it into something.

Richard: We kicked your butt.

Kevin: Double or nothing.

Richard: Double or nothing?

Tom: Double or nothing.

Richard: We could do that, Tommy.

Kevin: Get out.

Tom: Keep up the good hints, Mark.

You're doing a great job.

Kevin: Let's go.

Jenn: Bye, Nathan.

Next time.

Richard: See ya.

Tom: Those guys are crazy.

Mark: That's why everybody waited.

They knew I would be good.

Tom: Oh, yeah.

This is a nice piece of red oak.

Nathan: Yeah, this is a nice piece.

This is the one I grabbed out of the pile that Mike and I slabbed down, and I brought it to a kiln and just got it back.

It's nice and dry.

Tom: Well, that's good.

Kiln drying lessens the chance of it warping and twisting.

But it could still happen.

It is wood.

Nathan: Wood will do what it wants.

Tom: Exactly.

Now, I was thinking about it.

I know you wanted to make a bar top out of this.

Probably four or five feet long, you said.

I got thinking about the legs.

So we could just get some black iron pipe.

Nathan: Okay.

Just like a regular gas pipe?

Tom: Yep -- 3/4 inch.

Get the home center or hardware store.

And we'd have to get a bunch of fittings -- some tees and some braces and brackets and all that kind of stuff.

But rather than guess at the pieces that we need, I found that they have a kit.

The kit gives us everything that we need for the bar-top size that you want.

Nathan: Very nice.

And it takes all the guesswork out of it.

Mark: All the guesswork is gone, and I like that.

Nathan: I like it, too.

Tom: All right.

So this kit's for anywhere between 36 to 48, maybe 50 inches.

Nathan: Okay.

Tom: What do you think?

Which end do you want?

Nathan: This end's pretty cool.

We got a nice check, a little bit of a knot here.

Some good character to it.

Tom: Yeah.

I like that.

All right, so if we cut off a little bit extra -- So why don't we make this like a little over four feet?

We'll cut it and...mill it down.

Nathan: All right.

[ Saw buzzing ] Tom: All right.

That looks good.

Nathan: Yeah.

So the bark's gone.

Tom: Oh, yeah, it is, but it's dirty.

Oh, you can see this section right here.

This thin piece right there?

That's the spalting of the wood.

What happens is, as the tree's on the ground, the bark starts to separate away from the tree.

Water will migrate in there and accelerate the rotting of the wood.

I love that grain.

It really is beautiful.

Nathan: We'll take a little bit off.

Tom: Yeah.

So what we'll do is we'll clean this up and see how it looks.

Nathan: Getting soft?

Tom: Yeah, getting soft.

Actually, you can see how the little bugs have been in there, too, eating away.

Nathan: Yeah.

Tom: The wire wheel is a great tool for chipping away the wood fibers on the live edge.

You can see how it chips away at the wood fibers without doing too much damage to the live edge.

All right.

The wire wheel basically cleaned up a lot of the debris that's really rotting on this spalted part here.

Nathan: Yeah.

Tom: So I'm gonna try a belt sander with some real coarse paper.

It'll just clean the edges up and see if we can flatten it down but still leave all the undulation in there.

Nathan: Okay.

Tom: That's taken it down.

Nathan: Yeah.

I like the look.

Tom: Yeah.

[ Sander whirring ] All right, Nathan.

That edge looks pretty good.

Why don't you do the other side?

All right.

Edges look good.

Now we got to think about the surface.

We want it to be relatively flat.

Now, the thing is, when this thing goes through the mill, this tree is wet.

Nathan: Yeah.

Tom: And when it goes through, now you're breaking each section of the wood away from the rest of the tree.

And as soon as you do that, as you know, wood is gonna take on its own effect.

So it's releasing itself from grabbing the whole thing together, and it's gonna do all kinds of funky things.

Nathan: Twist and go back.

Tom: Right.

Right.

And so when I look down to this one, I see that there looks like there's a little bit of a high spot right here where this checking is.

Do you see it?

Nathan: I see that, too -- right there.

Tom: Let's take a straight edge and see if we can really see it right here.

If I hold down like that, you see a little bit of a light right down there.

Nathan: A little bigger right there.

Tom: Yeah.

So it's hitting here.

It's a dip here, and it's kind of flat there.

As I come all the way down...

I mean, for a rough-sawn piece of lumber that's been dried, that's pretty good.

Nathan: Yeah.

I agree.

Tom: But, you know, we want to make it relatively flat so that if you take a lamp or put something on there, you don't want it to... Nathan: Rock and roll around.

Tom: Exactly.

Why don't we just take an electric hand plane and see if we can knock this down just a little bit and see how it looks?

[ Plane whirring ] We'll hit this with the belt sander, and I think we might be in business.

Nathan: All right.

Tom: Normally what I would do is I would get some epoxy and I would maybe tint it and put it in these cracks and let it dry overnight.

I want to try seeing if we can use a five-minute epoxy.

I don't have any dye, but I'm gonna take some of the sawdust from when we used the belt sander and mix it in and make our own little mixture and fill it in the holes and let's see how it works.

Nathan: Sounds good.

Tom: This stuff is pretty strong.

Nathan: Yeah.

That'll make a good-looking wood filler right there.

Tom: Yeah.

Well, it's all from the same block of wood.

Nathan: Yeah.

Tom: As you know, whenever we're doing stuff and we can patch with the same sawdust, it definitely makes it disappear.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Tom: While the epoxy is curing, let's flip it over and work on the bottom.

All right.

So now we're all set to make the thickness equal over the entire run -- so make the top parallel with the bottom.

I think the best way to do it, because of the size of this, is with a router sled and a router bit.

And we got a couple of guides to ride it on.

Nathan: Another option would be the thickness planer.

We don't have to bring this piece to a planer, which we don't have.

We're just gonna do it in place.

Tom: Exactly.

We'd have to have like a 20-inch planer to do that.

So we've got a heavy-duty router -- three horsepower -- with a straight cutting bit.

I don't have a planer bit, so we're just gonna use a straight cutting bit.

We're gonna go light passes back and forth and work our way till we're all even where we want to be.

Nathan: Okay.

Something you want me to do in the meantime?

Tom: Yeah.

You want to start putting those legs together?

Nathan: I can do that.

Tom: Okay.

Great.

Nathan: All right.

The black pipe has an iron-oxide coating on it to keep it from rusting when it's in storage.

So before I start assembling, I'll clean up the pipes with a little bit of dish soap and water.

I picked up a little bit of an oil/wax combination here.

I'm just gonna buff it in.

Tom: What do you think?

Nathan: I think it came out really good.

Richard: A bar needs some stools.

Tom: Here we go.

You guys are done playing your game?

Mark: Yeah.

Tom: Thank you, Richard.

Kevin: Jenn and I promised, Tommy, that if you guys built it, we would drink on it.

[ Laughter ] So we brought the beer.

Tom: That doesn't surprise me.

Kevin: But you know what?

That looks really good, guys.

That looks awesome.

Jenn: The color, the thickness.

Can I have one for my house?

Tom: You like the live edge?

Nathan: That oil finished it off really nice.

Mauro: Pretty cool.

Kevin: Something this beautiful and the end of the season, I think, merits a celebration.

So I just want to let you know that that is a wrap from all of us for Season 21.

But we will be back next fall with brand-new episodes.

So until then, I'm Kevin O'Connor on behalf of all of us for "Ask This Old House."

Richard: All right.

Kevin: Hey, congrats.

Well done, everybody.

[ Group cheering, laughing ]