The tree was one on his ranch which I’d had my eye on for some time. As his ranch is where I obtain most of my table bases and lamp pieces (he’s got almost 5,000 acres that he lets me wander around on looking for unique pieces), figured this would be the project for that tree.

So, to get this out of the way and up front, yes … this is a full sized tree about 8′ tall.  Yes, that is a standard 6′ ladder in some of the first pictures, and yes, that is a full sized truck camper in the background of some of the final shots.  Brought to the house intact on a trailer.  My first chore was to get it to stand on it’s own.  I used the rafters in my work shop to support it while I figured out what to do.  After getting to “stand” in the garage with a couple of straps, I was able to determine where it was going to be top-heavy.  I used this knowledge to help build the base frame.

It is 4″x4″ Beetled Killed Pine, glued and screwed at each joint.  Each joint then was dowled with at least 1 (and several times two) 5/8″ hardwood dowls.  To keep the tree in place, there is about 10′ of 5/8″ all-thread that is glued into both the tree and the base.  To fill in the larger gaps, I added a thick layer of standard 3/4″ rock and another layer of epoxy just to make sure nothing moved (ever).  Can be moved around with a standard 2-wheel dolly with not much effort.

Next came the cleaning.  It is all done with a high (and I do mean high) pressure washer.  Hate to give away secrets, but the entire tree stripped to what you see in about an hour.

After a coat of spray lacquer to protect everything, it was loaded into a big stock trailer using straps from side to side and end to end to keep it off of the floor or the walls, and the whole thing was delivered to his taxidermist.  Not done yet, but will be a beautiful piece of work when they’re done with it. 

That’s the story behind the Bear Tree.