Tuesday, September 7, 2010

A Wood Hound Strikes Again!

Oh man, it has been a while since new wood has come into the basement shop! This load is one of the up-lifting things I needed heh.
So I keep loose taps on the Craig's List "Materials" category and have noticed some re-occurring adds for Ash and figured I'd give this guy a call... maybe he has the odd large piece maybe air dried stuff that one can happen upon at a small sawyer's mill. I know my friend and classmate Craig had gone a couple months ago and scored some sweet looking Red Elm. I figured he'd snatched the select planks. I took a trip on over anyway to see what I could see.
I wasn't overly impressed by the Ash but there were a few other goodies there!

Such as this little flitched log of Cherry!!! heh. Only about 6 feet long and not overly wide but it is relatively clean and Flitch cut! One does NOT happen on this ind of thing often, so I took it.
There is another piece of Cherry that is not pictured. I wasn't very excited about it but I felt bad for taking the guy's primo stuff and leaving a single flat-sawn board. Turns out that extra board isn't even a part of this log! GAH shows me for having morals :/. Maybe I can hand it off to someone who will use it... after I'm done with this log just in case.

Then these planks of Maple that had just started to spalt. Some of the coloring is quite nice and some is kind of funky. I'm not sure how I feel about them but figured I'd give them a shot. There is a Pith plank and the next one to either side of the Pith, also a random plank of maple in similar condition but cleaner and straighter than these.

And last but not least, these guys. Craig may recognize these as the Red Elm he left behind... WHY Craig, WHY!? Why would you leave such planks behind? Oh well better for me, sorry Craig but I'm picking up your slack heheh. These pieces may not be sequential but the story is that they were from a quite tall tree and due to equipment they had to cut the trunk up into shorter pieces (about 6 feet?). They are at least from the same tree which is nice. A big Pith Plank and two rifty planks. Also the odd little guy on the floor I thought might be useful when doing curved stuff... though with the checks it's a bit short for the cabinet in my head :/.
All of this... about 180 bf for a smidge over $500!!! I was happy and the sawyer seemed happy as well :).
With new material in the shop and the refreshing cooler temps outside I hope I can get back on the ball after a distracting summer!

6 comments:

Nick Brygidyr said...

woah....total woodgasm right here.

that cherry is pretty much the stuff i can get minus the bark, those other pieces look like theres a lot of rift going on there. not steamed i gather?

SGI said...

Looks like a good score Nick!

I'm curious to see what you are going to do with the Elm. I've got a couple of flat sawn planks, and have been having pretty bad buyer's remorse, reminds me to much of flat sawn oak (and my ugly kitchen cabinets.... ). But the stuff you got looks sweet.

But, maybe rifting it out is the way to go?

Nicholas Nelson said...

Nick - You can get Cherry like that locally!??? What the crap have you been complaining about? Ha.
The Cherry was AD as with the Maple I think. The Elm was KD which is a little disappointing but I wasn't going to leave it there ha.

Scott - Yes pretty good find considering the area. Yeah, I'm not a fan of Flat Elm, or flat anything really, but the courser grained woods in particular.
If you are doing some frame and panel or other kind of stickly work I'd try to get some rift out of the flat... Kind of like I did with some of the table components I made. That is if it is even possible.

Dan McC. said...

Great work Nick! Nice to see you score some good local material finally. I know you have been lamenting the local wood selection, those should keep you busy for a while!

Daisuke Tanaka said...

Looks like you started preparing for winter.

Nicholas Nelson said...

Dale - You mill lumber? Nice what kind of gear do you use?
I don't really have any connection to tree services yet, I just know a couple guys who mill lumber from a couple tree services. I don't have any lumber milling gear yet anyway. I'm just looking at an "Alaskan chainsaw mill" in the future like Dan uses (and JK did).

Dan - Yes sir, good to have something that I can see before hand and not bother with shipping, but it's not like this stuff is readily available all the time.
This doesn't mean that I don't want to ransack your stache though! You guys seem to get some neat stuff out there.

Daisuke - Ha yeah like I'm a little chipmunk stalking my "den" for the winter heh. Pretty much :)