More Beach Cherry

A reasonable day at the beach today, after a bit of a cold snap the temperature was above freezing this morning. The view was good, a bit dull with some cloud cover but at least not raining!


I headed down with a couple of buddies to see what we could mill up. There has been quite a bit of wood accumulate recently so pickings were pretty good. I selected a couple of short cherry logs, they are the tops of the trunks of some grafted ornamental cherries. These local street cherries often get to a good diameter, they grow quickly with all the moisture we get here and the lack of competition on the boulevards. They are susceptible to mineral staining, although these ones didn't seem to have any of that. Also, they do not have any of that red/pink that I associate with commercial cherry lumber. I think this must be a different variety of cherry. Definitely still smell like cherry. I didn't measure them, but probably around 18" in diameter, although barely 3' long.



The gremlins were particularly busy with us, I had one saw with a clutch that was slipping, and the other was jammed. Luckily I had brought a total of four saws with me, so we were able to work around all that by swapping out power heads. After we got that all straightened out, we made reasonable progress, and peeled 11 slabs out of the two logs. A couple slabs had some cracks and a couple had a bit of end staining on them, but overall pretty decent stuff. I split our results with one buddy, it'll dry for a couple years then go to furniture or to bowls/platters.

Nice!

Cherry wil change color with exposure to ultraviolet light. You can force it to change color by applying lye (1 tablespoon/quart water Red Devil Lye). Rinse and then neutralize with white vinegar, rinse again and let dry. Ultraviolet light and lye react with the tannic acid in the wood to make it change color without muddying the grain like stain will.

Go Dan Go!

I think you have the best milling location and I gotta hand it to you for standing stout and milling in the cold. I don't think my fingers would work in those temps.Thats good looking cherry. I hope we get to see some projects some time.

Old Blue
Still cursing our professional paid liers in ......
Kali-bone-ya

I dropped by the beach this morning as there was supposed to have been more wood dropped off there by the city crews yesterday. Apparently not, but here is a camera-phone picture of part of the pile that is there already. Most of it is junk, but there are a few gems too. I have my eye on a piece of elm that is about 3' in diameter, unfortunately it is only about 4' long, but nice and clear.


It was cold this morning, -2C but nice and clear, with an inversion layer trapping the fog over the harbour by downtown.


I am hoping to get out again next week.

I've miiled some red elm, and the slabs look pretty nice. I don't know how they will look with/without stain and oil ot poly finish, but I guess I'll find out. IIRC, my slabs are 5' long and I was limited to about 30" width by my 36" bar.

If that elm still has the bark on, be prepared for the smell. You'll swear you're stepping in dog crap!

Your posts here remind me that I need to go and check out a local place that might have some big logs. The smaller stuff gets taken for firewood pretty quickly.