Firewood Baah

[Mike Olson]

So, i have all these plans to make my wife an aniversery presant but I need a thick piece of wood. So i figure all those big chunks of Cherry firewood would be great. "i have been eying them for a while now"

I hunt through the pile to find the biggest piece. dig it out and clean it all off and into the garage it goes. hunt hunt hunt... hmm i guess i don't own an Ax...:confused:

time to dig out a 36" long, 3" high, 1/4" thick piece of steel I got when i thought I wanted to try welding. 2 days later i have sharpened it enough to look similar to that riving knife I saw Roy Underhill use minus the handle. Pull out the masonry sledge hammer and bingo puff beetle central. at least i think that's what they are called. tried two other pieces of firewood and they all have holes and paths eaten all through them. :mad:

Talk about a HUGE waste of time. From now on, firewood is just for burning...

[David Weaver]

Yeah, bug central and it never dries the way you want it.

When you start going through wood you've cut, you find out just how uncommon tall clear straight trees are, at least from the standpoint of not being able to knock down every tree you see and get nice clear 14 inch boards with no sapwood or knots.

We heated with wood when I was a kid. For a lot of the years, we cut and (hand) split all of it, too. Most of the seasoned wood had bug damage or checking that would make it worthless for anything, and anything that still had bark on it usually still had live bugs in it when it went in the stove. They always get mobile if you'd bring the next load of wood in too soon and let it sit a while.

Carpenter ants were a big problem in the older oaks, too. Split a lot of trunks apart to find thousands of ants in them. If there were enough of them, we burned them.

Hickory was always full of bug holes before it even came down. That's not something you'd split with a maul or a froe, though.

[Jim Koepke]

I have made a few mallets from the firewood around here. Lately I just put a handle on one end and leave the other end rough. When it gets too chewed up from whacking the froe, it goes into the fire.

jim

[Dan Andrews]

I make a lot of small things from my wood pile. Hammer handles from hickory, hacksaw and drill handles from maple. Small drill side handles from hickory or iron wood. I also made a set of small maple scrapers to scrape crud of old tools when I want to preserve the finish underneeth. Most of the firewood is not good, but some is and I only need a little at a time. Very satisfying going from tree to wooded object.

[george wilson]

I made the most elegant and expensive flintlock pistol I ever made from a piece of walnut firewood an astute friend gave me. It was straight grained,but near 1 end,it curved perfectly at the angle an early 18th.C. pistol would curve. Plus,it had small butt wrinkles where it curved. I let it lay around the shop for 3-4 years. It wasn't but a little over 2" thick. Finally,it was good and dry to use.

I sold the gun to the last Dow to run Dow Chemical Co. We had big contributors to Williamsburg visit the Toolmaker's Shop. I used to bring in some nice items I made to liven up the displays we'd put out. I lost more things that way!!!

Speaking of that,years ago,when I first started getting serious about making tools at home(I had a very tiny home shop,and needed a break from instrument making in the evenings),I had accumulated about 15 or more brass miter planes,and other things,mostly planes. My director told me to get my handmade tools and display them on a table as the large Early American Industries group visiting the museum left a lecture. I told my boss that they'd want to buy them. He didn't care. The group CLEARED my table off!!