Georgia State Capitol Building
Old growth Urban Oak tree given second life as tables for State Capitol Building
Root-to-Fruit story in progress
Georgia's official state tree is the live oak. The live oak is a tree indigenous to the state and an important species in Atlanta's tree canopy that gives the city the nickname: "City in the Forest". The State Capitol Building had a large Urban Oak (aka Water Oak) tree in the front lawn that had to be removed for hazardous reasons. To preserve the tree, the State Capitol Building delivered the salvaged log to Eutree to be sawed into slabs for tabletops.
The log is delivered to Eutree's lumberyard, and loaded onto Wood-Mizer 1000 sawmill by forklift
Prior to sawing, the log is inspected and assessed for quality (e.g., nails, metals or other foreign objects).
Hydraulics on the mill allow our sawyers to rotate the heavy log automatically to position the log properly for sawing.
Fun fact: the State Capitol log was the inaugural saw on the Wood-Mizer 1000 mill.
The mill is designed to program the size of each slab on the machine's control pad. A large bandsaw runs the circumference of the machine's chassis and precsily saws the log into live edge slabs.
Freshly cut slabs are referred to as "green slabs" until they go through the drying process. After air drying outdoors in the lumberyard for 12 months, the slabs are loaded into the kiln to heat dry for 30 days. This photo was taken on Day 1 of the kiln drying process.
On Day 30, the kiln is reopened and the dried slabs are removed by forklift.
The kiln dried slabs are brought into the warehouse by forklift to be surfaced on the sanders.
Each slab is surfaced within minutes, revealing the tree's inner beauty and graining patterns.
The client picked up the slabs the same day the slabs were surfaced, and delivered to a furniture maker where they will be finished into tables.
Stay tuned for photos of finished tables coming soon!