Is This How the Woodworking Bug Bites?

[Steve H Graham]

Good friend of mine is in town. Last night, I showed him the new "disco garage," which means I showed him the shelf I installed for my old TV, and the crappy old stereo I attached to it. He saw a beautiful board I made from a mahogany log I stole from a trashpile, and he fell in love with it. He can't believe I made this board. Now he wants to get out the planer and sled and make one for himself.

Is this how the sickness begins?

I keep seeing mahogany everywhere, waiting for the garbage trucks. I guess people are trimming their trees ahead of hurricane season. It's not my favorite wood, but you can't beat this price.

[mike holden]

I keep seeing mahogany everywhere, waiting for the garbage trucks. I guess people are trimming their trees ahead of hurricane season. It's not my favorite wood, but you can't beat this price.

Steve,
Since its not your favorite wood, just mail all of it to me, I will even pay postage (grin)
Course if you want, I will send you all the poplar and maple trunks that litter the streets on trash day up here.
Mike

[glenn bradley]

That is certainly one of the ways the bug bites. Mike is too far away (I made that up); send all that nasty mahog to me!!!

[Jeff Willard]

I remember hanging around at the counter at a hardwood dealer one day, much like people do in a barbershop. In walks a guy and he states that he needs to match a piece of wood, and then starts to describe it to the guy behind the counter. Counter guy informs him that he just described about 250 different species of wood to him, and hands him a copy of World Woods in Color and tells him that if he can find a picture of it, he may be able to help. He flipped through the book, looking at various photos for about 10 min., finally closed the book, and stated, "now I know why you wood guys are the way you are", and left. I took it as a compliment-sorta'.

[Jeff Willard]

It's not my favorite wood, but you can't beat this price.

Work some of that stuff-I mean really work it-chisels, saws, handplanes. Then do the same with a few other species. You may change your opinion.

My favorite wood, from a visual standpoint, is the various maples. But every time I have to put a sharpened edge to it, I wish it were mahogany, or walnut.

[Steve H Graham]

I'd send it to people if I could. I can't do that, because it would involve effort, and as I have often said, effort is against policy.

Also, it's danged heavy right after they cut it. I do my very best to avoid lifting anything over maybe 70 pounds. I have a near-phobia about lifting things, especially when they're as awkward as logs. It made me very nervous, putting a foot-thick log on the band saw.

You guys should pool your money and send someone down here with a flatbed. In a couple of days he could fill it with free mahogany. Of course, most of it would be two-foot lengths, and a lot of the logs would be six inches in diameter. Still, fun for small projects.

Seems like a lot of cutting is going on right now, and my best guess is that people are thinking of June 1, the beginning of hurricane season.

I was surprised to learn that some of our stranger woods, which don't make good furniture, are very good for turning. Poinciana is an example. I know some people turn live oak. It's everywhere. I use it for smoking pork.

I envy all you guys who live where real trees grow, and where you don't have to pay some wood-boutique doofus fifteen dollars a foot to get a nice piece of maple or walnut. I grieve when I think of the wooded land I've sold. I still own interests in a few pieces in Kentucky. A thousand miles from me and my woodworking tools!

[Neal Clayton]

it's all a grass is greener thing. we all want what everyone nearby else hasn't got ;).

probably alot of folks would kill for cheap cypress back home in new orleans, and the same thing for the cheap yellow pine people get in georgia, and the cheap oak i can get here in arkansas.

[Keith Domingue]

We got a lot of blow downs when Ike went through, but most of it was oak and pine. More trouble then it is worth to mill by hand. I did acquire a couple of small elm logs and one pear log that I plan to plank out eventually. A lot of work, but it can be very rewarding to complete a project built from scratch.

[Blake Barr]

Up in new england it'd be a boon for free downed wood. My parents have 60 acres in NH with downed branches and trees everywhere you look from the ice storm

[harry strasil]

Back when I was able to, I used to go into farmers timbers and clean up after the loggers got done, lots of walnut limbs 8 to 10 inches in diameter got cut up for firewood, a few nice straight ones about 4 to 6 ft long I saved and let the white wood rot off, then cut them up for lumber. It was really a heart rendering sad day when a local farmer customer brought in a blowdown Walnut that had been thru a fire that was 2 ft in diameter cut into 24 inch chunks for firewood. 3 full heaping pickup loads of it no less.