Daninvan
ArboristSite Operative
Out again with my bowl turning friend on another gorgeous day at the city log dump.
The log dump is practically empty right now, we picked the last two remaining half decent logs. First was an oak that had been sitting in the dump for about a year.
The second was a large chunk of spalted maple that had only shown up a few weeks ago at the dump. We were a bit leery of it as it looked somewhat past its best before date. There was one area that seemed solid enough that we might get a few slabs out of it. Plus there wasn't much else to choose from.
Here are the two logs all set up, with the 390 all ready to go.
So after we stripped the bark, we cut the end off the oak log. It was immediately obvious that it was not oak, but it was less obvious what it was. So we peeled off the first slab and lo and behold it wasn't oak at all, but rather some kind of hard maple.
The slab in the picture above has some pith in it, in general the slabs from this log were pretty good. We cut them to 4" thick and my friend high graded them for bowl blanks. He had to work around a couple knots, and a nail that the saw found. He wound up with 9 pretty decent blanks.
The other log turned out to be even a bit further gone than we had feared. We peeled off 5 slabs at 2 1/2" thick, but there was so much soft and punky wood that we eventually stopped about half way through the log. Which was too bad as the log was over 30" wide at the widest point, it had a lot of wood in it. All the slabs were gorgeous, similar to the one below.
Up close though, you can see that the wood was so soft that the saw was tearing as it cut. The darker wood is reasonably solid, but the lighter wood around it is very soft. Hard to take advantage of the spalting that way. Kind of disappointing, if only we had got to it a bit earlier it would be pretty sweet wood.
I cut a few sections out that looked promising, but I have my doubts about how it will turn out.
Once again I did not have to sharpen my chains at all. Looking forward to getting my other 3120 back from the shop though, I do notice that the 390 struggles on cuts the 3120 goes through with ease. Left a bit more scrap than usual once again, mostly due to the amount of punk in the second log. Still a lovely day when we left.
Door to door it was just over three hours.
I bumped into my bowl turning friend at the grocery store a few hours later.
Hey I noticed that after the arboristsite crashed a couple years ago, when it finally came back that it now seems to restrict the size of the photos that are displayed. I use the "Upload a File" feature, or sometimes I put them on Photobucket and use the links, but either way the photos look small to me. Anyone know how to get photos to display larger, without having to redirect to a photo hosting site?
The log dump is practically empty right now, we picked the last two remaining half decent logs. First was an oak that had been sitting in the dump for about a year.
The second was a large chunk of spalted maple that had only shown up a few weeks ago at the dump. We were a bit leery of it as it looked somewhat past its best before date. There was one area that seemed solid enough that we might get a few slabs out of it. Plus there wasn't much else to choose from.
Here are the two logs all set up, with the 390 all ready to go.
So after we stripped the bark, we cut the end off the oak log. It was immediately obvious that it was not oak, but it was less obvious what it was. So we peeled off the first slab and lo and behold it wasn't oak at all, but rather some kind of hard maple.
The slab in the picture above has some pith in it, in general the slabs from this log were pretty good. We cut them to 4" thick and my friend high graded them for bowl blanks. He had to work around a couple knots, and a nail that the saw found. He wound up with 9 pretty decent blanks.
The other log turned out to be even a bit further gone than we had feared. We peeled off 5 slabs at 2 1/2" thick, but there was so much soft and punky wood that we eventually stopped about half way through the log. Which was too bad as the log was over 30" wide at the widest point, it had a lot of wood in it. All the slabs were gorgeous, similar to the one below.
Up close though, you can see that the wood was so soft that the saw was tearing as it cut. The darker wood is reasonably solid, but the lighter wood around it is very soft. Hard to take advantage of the spalting that way. Kind of disappointing, if only we had got to it a bit earlier it would be pretty sweet wood.
I cut a few sections out that looked promising, but I have my doubts about how it will turn out.
Once again I did not have to sharpen my chains at all. Looking forward to getting my other 3120 back from the shop though, I do notice that the 390 struggles on cuts the 3120 goes through with ease. Left a bit more scrap than usual once again, mostly due to the amount of punk in the second log. Still a lovely day when we left.
Door to door it was just over three hours.
I bumped into my bowl turning friend at the grocery store a few hours later.
Hey I noticed that after the arboristsite crashed a couple years ago, when it finally came back that it now seems to restrict the size of the photos that are displayed. I use the "Upload a File" feature, or sometimes I put them on Photobucket and use the links, but either way the photos look small to me. Anyone know how to get photos to display larger, without having to redirect to a photo hosting site?
