Thomas Bennett
09-28-2010, 5:00 PM
In the spirit of Mike Cruz and his walnut bowl blank harvesting I have the following to report. Mike, if you lived closer than six hours away I would have been over to share in your harvest. I wish some of you could be over here to get some of this "tornado wood".
About a week ago a tornado cut a 13 mile path through our county here in Southern Ohio. There are the usual tornado stories going around about cars blowing around, a chiller on the high school roof was picked up and found on the ground, buildings with braches imbedded that looked like darts. Obviously, tree limbs all over the place. Luckily there were very few injuries, only one death. This is a rare occurrence for us. The storm came and went in about 5 minutes. We live about 2 miles from one of the heavily damaged areas and received no damage whatsoever. Of course, it’s the poor that got hurt the most with mobile homes upsetting, etc. A lot of us spent the week helping others dig out of this mess.
Meanwhile, the county provided a dumping spot for all the downed wood, limbs and slash. The pile doubled in size in 24 hours from when I first saw it. It is easily a couple of acres. I went out on Friday and immediately found a beautiful hunk of hard maple. I cut three large “cookies” that filled up my truck. Two of us could hardly pick up the sawn chunks. I went back on Saturday and found some large box elder. Upon processing it I realized the large pieces had wind shake. No good! I returned a third time and found a fellow member of our woodturning club cutting up some nice walnut crotches. Hee, hee, he was so excited he failed to notice large gnarly soft maple with a few burls laying nearby. I cut it up. I saw a lot more large hard maple logs, some beautiful chunks of 30” dia. red oak, some large hawthorn and a lot more. Most of it was white pine, though. There is so much there it’s overwhelming. I try not to take more than I can process. I have since hear the firewood folks are in there cutting, which they should1 The remainder will be chipped at a later date.
This hard maple really kicked my butt! I think I reached the capacity, in weight and density, of the Powermatic. The heartwood of some of the larger blanks is just plain dense, and it is soaking wet. It was all I could do to lift some of the blanks, that were 22 inches in diameter, onto the lathe. The outboard assembly I have shook loose at one point. I tripped the electronics a couple of times. The larger finished blanks are 19 inches. I would start on the right “outboard” end of the lathe and more the blank into the bed when it was round and less than 20 inches, keeping the tailstock on, of course. I really do not know if I will be able to turn these blanks, on this lathe, when they are dry. They are big, and hard. This is why I prefer the soft maple.
Check out the photos, you will get the idea.
About a week ago a tornado cut a 13 mile path through our county here in Southern Ohio. There are the usual tornado stories going around about cars blowing around, a chiller on the high school roof was picked up and found on the ground, buildings with braches imbedded that looked like darts. Obviously, tree limbs all over the place. Luckily there were very few injuries, only one death. This is a rare occurrence for us. The storm came and went in about 5 minutes. We live about 2 miles from one of the heavily damaged areas and received no damage whatsoever. Of course, it’s the poor that got hurt the most with mobile homes upsetting, etc. A lot of us spent the week helping others dig out of this mess.
Meanwhile, the county provided a dumping spot for all the downed wood, limbs and slash. The pile doubled in size in 24 hours from when I first saw it. It is easily a couple of acres. I went out on Friday and immediately found a beautiful hunk of hard maple. I cut three large “cookies” that filled up my truck. Two of us could hardly pick up the sawn chunks. I went back on Saturday and found some large box elder. Upon processing it I realized the large pieces had wind shake. No good! I returned a third time and found a fellow member of our woodturning club cutting up some nice walnut crotches. Hee, hee, he was so excited he failed to notice large gnarly soft maple with a few burls laying nearby. I cut it up. I saw a lot more large hard maple logs, some beautiful chunks of 30” dia. red oak, some large hawthorn and a lot more. Most of it was white pine, though. There is so much there it’s overwhelming. I try not to take more than I can process. I have since hear the firewood folks are in there cutting, which they should1 The remainder will be chipped at a later date.
This hard maple really kicked my butt! I think I reached the capacity, in weight and density, of the Powermatic. The heartwood of some of the larger blanks is just plain dense, and it is soaking wet. It was all I could do to lift some of the blanks, that were 22 inches in diameter, onto the lathe. The outboard assembly I have shook loose at one point. I tripped the electronics a couple of times. The larger finished blanks are 19 inches. I would start on the right “outboard” end of the lathe and more the blank into the bed when it was round and less than 20 inches, keeping the tailstock on, of course. I really do not know if I will be able to turn these blanks, on this lathe, when they are dry. They are big, and hard. This is why I prefer the soft maple.
Check out the photos, you will get the idea.