For many years I had wanted to make a trestle table from large natural planks of wood but never had the wood or time to do so.  After I retired and got settled into my new house, I had the time. When I saw a local ad on Facebook for planks of wood, I went to check it out and bought a two inch thick plank of oak and a smaller two inch thick plank of pecan.  The oak plank was about 24 inches wide and about ten feet long although one end of it tapered to about one foot.  The pecan plank was about seven feet long but had a split in it.  I only wanted to build a six foot table, so I cut off the end of the oak where it began to taper. The wood was rough sawn, so it needed planning and at the time I only had a 12 inch surface planer, so I split the piece of oak down the middle, planed both sides smooth on my 12 inch planer. (The following year I bought a 20 inch planer) I then planed the piece of pecan smooth and cut it to 12 inches wide then spliced the three boards together to make the tabletop.  The end of the pecan board with the split I made a butterfly splice to hold the two sides together then filled the gap with plastic resin.  For the trestle legs I went to the local Repurpose Center and bought some old heart wood pine.  I then found a nice piece of Florida cherry at a local wood place which became the tops for two trestle benches matching the table.

The rough cut wood.  The piece on the left and on the right was one piece of oak. The right piece was cut off from the top of the piece on the left.. The piece in the middle is pecan.

  For the legs of the table I went to the local Repurpose Store and bought a pair of rough cut 2x8 old pine boards.

Pecan Plank

Table top, oak plank above split in half with pecan plank in the middle

The left end of the oak plank above.

At first I didn’t know what to do with the tapered end of the oak plank that I had cut off and it stood in my garage for several months.  The following year I was at a yoga retreat in Italy when the retreat place had a very cool leaning chair, and I used that as an inspiration to make a chair out of the remain piece of oak.   See Chair details

Trial assemble of chair on workbench

Final chair on my patio

In my new house I didn’t have a good place to put the table, I already had a very nice dinning room table so I put the table outside under the cover of my patio.  After a several months I though the table was nice to have outside  and  really didn’t want a table there, plus the table was too nice to be outside so I advertised to sell it.  Within a few days a young couple said they were interested in it and came by to see it and bought it right away.  When they saw the chair and I explained it was made from the same piece of wood as the table, they bought it also.  Below is the picture they sent me of the table in their house.

Updated: 07-03-2023