The Fenland Black Oak Project | Hacker News Reader

The Fenland Black Oak Project

thefenlandblackoakproject.co.uk

77 pointsOarch13 comments

A 13-meter (42ft) table made from a 5000 year old oak tree that was preserved by bog conditions in England.

I wonder if any special care was required to cut a subfossilized 5000 year old piece of wood - does it get appreciably harder over time? Or was that not long enough?

Also interesting that they had to dry it out and the planks shrank by half. I wonder if they considered having to replace the liquid with something else, such as was done with the Vasa ship which was submerged for a few hundred years.

Its always been my understanding that recovered timbers need some sort of fluid replacement. The Mary Rose had 19years of being sprayed with PEG.

https://maryrose.org/news/mary-rose-enters-final-phase-of-co...

For almost three decades since being raised from the Solent, the hull of the Mary Rose – Henry VIII’s 500-year-old flagship – has been continuously sprayed, first with chilled fresh water to remove salt and then with Polyethlene Glycol (PEG), a water soluble wax.

This depends on the individual piece of wood. Bog oak can be incredibly tough as the fossilisation process has started and the minerals from the water deep into the wood.

Replacing the water with resins isn’t needed as the original shape won’t be retained (unlike a ship or relic). Care must be taken during the drying process to avoid warping though.

I grew up in the Fens and it every few years a farmer would uncover a piece of bog oak and leave it at the edge of a field.

I just got in to milling trees in the last month, went from a 20" to mill up an old oak that fell in my back yard to a 36" 661. All I can say is the satisfaction of seeing what is in a tree has been some of the most fun I've ever had in 100+ degree weather. If you made it 75 degrees and 5000 years old I may never stop hunting.

Was not expecting to see Fenland referenced here! Beautiful project.

Wow, what an awesome project. The pictures at the end where the table is in the cathedral could almost be straight out of Lord of the Rings...it looks like something you'd see in Minas Tirith.

Awesome project.

"table related merchandise" is a funny phrase. I guess art has always needed sponsorship.

I was really looking for "vial of sawdust" or "1cm long splinter" as limited quantity items in their store.

They could sell pieces of True Cross cut from scraps of it. The story of how it got transported from Judea to England and buried there is the stuff of legends.

They should license it to MMORPG fantasy games for decorating castles.

Why would I want each paragraph and image to fade in as I scroll down the page?

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