Some little time ago I reached a momentous decision...
The reason, if you recollect, was that the once reasonably full stocks of timber were getting somewhat depleted and available fundage needed to be directed to replacing it. Well, my cunning plan started to come towards some sort of fruition last night as a pal from work dropped off a lump of air dried English Oak.
But this is not just any lump of oak, this was a huge chunk of quarter sawn stuff that's over 100mm thick! It's been air drying for the last four or five years so may still be a little damp in the middle. The aim though, over the next few days is to remove the sap with a nice sharp rip saw (that's going to take some time as well) and then cut into into two big pieces by sawing down the middle along the split as at the moment it's just too big to comfortably move around. Somewhere in there though, is the material for a couple of nice cabinets, depending on how I intend to cut it. I think somehow I've justified the cost of getting hold of that new bandsaw...
But this is not just any lump of oak, this was a huge chunk of quarter sawn stuff that's over 100mm thick! It's been air drying for the last four or five years so may still be a little damp in the middle. The aim though, over the next few days is to remove the sap with a nice sharp rip saw (that's going to take some time as well) and then cut into into two big pieces by sawing down the middle along the split as at the moment it's just too big to comfortably move around. Somewhere in there though, is the material for a couple of nice cabinets, depending on how I intend to cut it. I think somehow I've justified the cost of getting hold of that new bandsaw...
In conversation with James, he also mentioned that he had some odds n'ends of air dried English Ash which wasn't much good and... ''did I want that as well?'' (for no extra cost!) Thinking that it was going to be only fit for burning ( eg. peices of limb wood in the round full of splits and cracks) I said I would have it anyway...what was there too lose? However, when I saw it in the back of the wagon, it turned out to be much better than I'd anticipated. True, some of the pieces were very crudely hacked on a fairly agricultural saw but all were sound with most of the bits being reasonably straight, a good size, crack free and some were even quarter sawn. They were also a good thickness, being for the most part over 50mm thick.
All I need now is to collect a few more bits and pieces like this and the racks will be topped off...
2 comments:
You definitely NEED that new bandsaw. There's no question about it.
And nice score on the free wood!
If you have everything... I mean all the tools available I don't there is no reason that you cannot transform a piece of wood into something very useful and very attractive. My father has a lot of trees planted in our farm and we are so blessed that most of his materials came from his own plants.
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