Last weekend, I noticed on my way to work, a rather large maple tree branch was broken, but still attached to the tree. By the time I got off work, the branch had fallen to the ground and I thought to myself, with a bit of work that could make the perfect tree stand for Neko and Miku. I'd been wanting one for a while, but nothing on the market was in the range of what I wanted to pay. This weekend I was able to put some work into it and get it most of the way there. I just need to attach toys to complete it now. Anyways, the following are a few photos of the progression of fallen tree to foraging tree. Enjoy.
All in all, this was not as bad as I thought it would be. Originally I had a more elaborate base attachment designed, but in the end I found a heavy duty 4" hanger bolt threaded through a 3/4" pine base w/ fender washers and wingnut does a fine job securing the tree upright. I lined the bottom with a clear plastic stair runner, so any mess is easy to vacuum or wipe up. The stair runner is also nice because I don't constantly have to line newspapers on this thing. There are casters underneath for easy moving around, and I also splurged and got nice molding to use as edge trims to finish the tray. Quite functional and all in, I'd say about 40$, mostly for the tray parts and some various hardware to attach the branches, but thats minimal.
So, one weekend of tree cleaning, a weeks worth of baking in the sun, and another day to assemble the tree and tray, and only $40 all in, I think this went pretty well. Only the cleaning was the hard part and if I had better facilities I would do a much more thorough job. But in the end, its probably still turned out cleaner than a $400 tree stand from a dusty warehouse somewhere.