1725 ad ?

[Kim Ford]

We had thanksgiving dinner with some good friends who recently completed their new home. The original home and barn burned in a fire last year and they lost everything. But a year of hard work and a good insurance policy and insurance company have put them back to normal. After dinner my host said he had some of the beams from the barn that burnt down that he was cutting up for fire wood because they were badly burned, and asked if maybe I could find a piece to turn a bowl out of. The Wisconsin dairy farm was originally his uncles and he wanted a keepsake of sort because the house and barn were originally built by the family about 1875.

So out to the barn yard we went. He had started cutting up beams and there was a pile of two foot lengths. All of the beams were originally hand cut, about 12” square and we found one with minimal cracks that was a floor joist, flat on two sides. The wood looked like elm but that was just a guess.

I took it home and cleaned it up with the band saw to see what I had and split it down the heart to get two nice slabs about 11” X 3”. Then I looked at it very close and discovered it was either chestnut or beech, not elm and was very tight grain. So we counted the rings. In what must have been a 12” +/- log, the 6” radius we counted had a minimum of 150 growth rings, almost 30 per inch. If a tree gets one growth ring per year that means this tree started its young life around 1725 AD. Don’t know how it will turn, that is tonight but it was just a little humbling to think about the age of this piece.

Oh and by the way, I think it is dry. I shouldn't have to DNA, boil or bag it to get the moisture out. :)

I will post pictures when it is complete.

[Dan Hintz]

There can be more than one growth ring in a year (such as those caused by a mid-summer drought), but overall the pattern of 1/yr generally holds as a good average. That's some ooooold stuff.

[Mark Hubl]

Sounds like it should be fun making something out of that wood. Noticed your locale. Makes me wish I was stopping for a root beer float, picking up beer at the piggly wiggly and heading over to Road America. Your neck of the woods is one of my favorite spots in the midwest.

[David E Keller]

Sounds interesting... Now, get out there and turn it, so we can all see what it looks like.:D

[Jeff Nicol]

Kim, I live in Eau Claire and there are many old barns around here that the beams are made from Red elm or "Slippery" elm. It grows to a very large size and very straight and tougher than heck for beams and structures. The grain will be very tight and will throw you off if you are not familar with the wood. It is used a lot to make long bows and laminate recurves. I am turning a bunch of items for a friend of mine out of a piece of a beam that was removed from the barn that had some water and bug damage. It was replaced with another beam from a barn that had been torn down near by so the barn is still standing. I am turning pieces for everyone in the family from the second generation owner down to his grand children. I will take some pictures to show the wood and see if it is the same as what you have.

Kim, Here are the pictures of what I have made so far, plus a bunch of miniatures.

Sounds like fun no matter what,

Jeff