These decorative stumps are fun and I love that they help explore a new function as well as a piece of the outdoors inside. However I cannot quite bring myself to buy a tree stump for almost two hundred dollars. This poses the question. Petrified wood. How do you do it yourself?

Here is an article on the background of wood petrification. Sculpture James Sanborn used petrified wood in his sculpture called “Kryptos.” Here is the process for creating petrified wood:

“Artificial petrified wood has been produced in a Washington lab. In the process small cubes of pine were soaked in an acid bath for two days then in a silica solution for another two. The product was then cooked at 1400 °C in an argon atmosphere for two hours. The result was silicon carbide ceramic which preserved the intricate cell structure of the wood. Soaking in a tungsten solution produced a tungsten carbide petrified wood.”

I guess I will not be petrifying any wood any time soon. But there has to be another way to come up with a nice clean stump for less than two hundred dollars. Thoughts? Anyone?