Holy Face Check Batman!!!

[scott gunnell]

I have a pile of 4/4 cherry that I had milled a little over 18 months ago and it has been staring at me, much like those Geico commercials with the pile of cash, and saying "make something of me."

After some silent deliberation I came up with a plan for a desk. Kind of different and a challenge for my joinery skills.

After the first piece passed over the jointer I vaguely remembered something that my sawmill guy said about that not really being the best cherry he had ever seen. (No fault of his, I cut my own logs at work and haul to the mill myself. I don't have the pick of the place, but I can have any tree that needs to come out.)

Back to the present -- I have never seen material with as much waste per board than this stuff. I usually plan on 10 - 20%, but 40 - 60% is a little excessive:mad:. I am now hoping that the stack has enough usable material to even complete the project. What I am getting has some nice figure, but nothing extraordinary.

In all my cherry work, I have never run across stuff that has radial cracks and cupping quite like this. Anybody else found some material like this?

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Yes. It's aggrivating, but it is to be expected I suppose. My recent run in with a gnarly pile of decent looking rough cut walnut ended up with me trying to find enough matching boards at the supplier to finish the dresser that I should have had enough for, with a 60% margin for "shrink". I guess if it was easy, everyone would do it...

[Lee Mitchell]

My neighbor has a portable sawmill. After hurricane Fran came through a few years ago, he lost a number of trees on his farm. Walnut, oak, hickory, pine, etc. Fortunately, he was able to cut and sticker a good supply of lumber. Unfortunately, the stress imposed by those winds resulted in a high percentage of waste when those boards went to the jointer/planer.

Lee in NC