Any place to find or buy certain woods?

[Vernon Jenewein]

If I were looking for Elm, or Hawthorn, or even Elder, where would I look?

[Jim Burr]

There will be other answers, but ebay, is a place to start... literally dozens of others.

[Vernon Jenewein]

When I lived back in Western Nebraska, Chinese Elm grew quite abundantly. I can't begin to imagine how much elm I've cut up and split for firewood. I've even seen my cousin cut up a large black walnut tree for firewood as well. I live in SW Michigan where there are TONS of trees around here. We had a large black cherry tree on our back part of our 10 acres until a few years ago, the neighbor hired an old man that didn't know where boundries were and came down into our property taking out the whole string of trees we had on the back end, about 330 feet of them, and then came down with the bulldozer with "clamping" device and removed that cherry tree right by the roots and moved it into the burn pile.

I also have a pear tree that grew voluntary, in our back yard (so to speak) and it is probably 25 feet tall now. Pear wood good for anything?

[Dave Bunge]

LL Johnson in Charlotte - just south of Lansing - has a very large selection of hardwood lumber. You might try them.
http://www.theworkbench.com/

[thomas prusak]

Have you looked in the woods? :-/

[Vernon Jenewein]

I'm sure we have an assortment of interesting wood in our back yard. Unfortunately, I grew up in Nebraska, and know what a few different trees look like, but there are some trees I have never seen growing. In the far corner of our property stands a huge Shagbark Hickory. Tree identifications is one thing, Poison Ivy (plentiful!!!!!!!) around here is another. One thing the wood would be green for a while and not suitable for cutting on a lathe, etc. Other thing is putting up with the poison ivy and oaks. You are talking to someone severely allergic to that stuff. It's almost a prevalent around our property as dandilions or wild blackberries.

I do have a small tree that blew over right at the ground level, called an Autumn Olive. There are a lot of those around here, and in the fall they produce a small edible red berry that is full of antioxidants and some other cancer fighting elements. These trees DO grow like weeds here, sprouting anywhere a bird dropping happens to land. A noxious tree in Michigan.

I contacted LL Johnson a while back about Apricot wood and they didn't have any, but they might have some other stuff as well. Woodcraft in Grand Rapids has some woods, but are a bit pricy, and most of it is short for pen turning.

[John Keeton]

Vernon, the Autumn Olive should be very similar to the Russian Olive, and if so, Curt Fuller does some amazing stuff with it! You might want to try that, as a start. Real shame about the incident of taking out all the trees. I believe someone would have compensated me for those!

Sounds like you are wanting flat stock, though. Not sure what you have in mind. The 1x1x14 would not yield much more than a plate unless you want to do segmenting, and then you could easily use much smaller lumber. 14" flat stock in anything is going to be difficult to find.

[Vernon Jenewein]

...Sounds like you are wanting flat stock, though. Not sure what you have in mind. The 1x1x14 would not yield much more than a plate unless you want to do segmenting, and then you could easily use much smaller lumber. 14" flat stock in anything is going to be difficult to find.

John, it's actually small spindle piece. I got the idea when I was looking for a way to use up the left over small odd sized pieces that were left when a guy cut the apricot wood into smaller pieces for me to turn for duduks. I'm a big Harry Potter fan, and was going to make wands similar to those that were used by the members of the series. So, 1" x 1" x 14" would give me a small wand with some waste stock on the end.
http://www.duduk.us/files/pictures/first_2_lathe_projects.jpg




The duduk on top is apricot wood, and was made in Armenia, bought through eBay. Middle is "my" duduk in it's stage of progress. I have since drilled the length with a 12mm boring bit and cut off the waste at the indicated line, and tapered the other end. Below that is a wand I made from just fiddling around with a small piece of left over wood. I am thinking I can make either wands out of real wood, or orchestra Conductor "batons". The batons need to be rather slim for use.

Off topic, I notice I cannot just use img links (by hand) in here? All I get in a preview is a link.

Also, as a side note, this link: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Wand shows a number of wands by the characters in Harry Potter books and movies. When they made the wands for the actors/character there are no two wands made alike. All are individually hand made and different from each other. Draco Malfoy's first wand was made of Hawthorne. Belatrix LeStrange's first wand was Walnut, and judging from the darkness, probably Black Walnut. Lucious Malfoy's first wand was made of Elm. Elder wood would probably be a lot harder to find than some of these. Most people never work with elm as it is simply not cut into much wood. I did find some nice lengths of Black Walnut at Woodcraft. http://www.woodcraft.com/Search2/Search.aspx?query=hardwood%20dowels&page=3 Many different sizes to choose.

[Bill Wyko]

Here's where I get most of my woods. They specialize in exotic woods. They have a special for free shipping right now too.
http://www.woodworkerssource.com/

[John Keeton]

Vern - not sure why I had in my mind a 14" wide 4/4 stock!!!!:confused: I even typed the numbers?!?!? In any event, if all it takes is that size, then I might by able to help you with some walnut, maple, cherry, red oak or white oak. Let me know if you can't find the other species.

Sorry, again, for the confusion!

[Vernon Jenewein]

No worries, John. I have some small slabs of red oak and white oak out in the quonset that I got from Woodcraft. Sort of small planks,... left overs as such. I figure I can cut those into square lengths on the band saw. BTW, I just bought a Craftsman band saw 10" that has exactly the same dimensions and criteria as the Rikon 10" bandsaw. Hmmmm. Anyway, after I bought the 10" Craftsman band saw, a guy I had left a message on his cell phone has a 12" 2 speed Craftsman for 110 dollars. Seems like a reasonable amount for a used band saw, and it has 2 speeds. I cut some Apricot blanks the other day down from the 2 3/8" that they were to quarter size pieces, and did not seem to have any trouble cutting at all. I may not need his after all. I bought an Olson 72 1/2" blade with 4 TPI and a raker style for cutting the blanks. Seems like it might be right size from what I've read. First time I used a band saw as well. Squared it up. Cut a piece of pine waste to see what the angle was for the bandsaw blade and adjusted my fence accordingly. I have noticed on some left overs that there is kind of a semi-wavy pattern on the cut side. Is this from going to fast or just the nature of the band saw? For lathe work it matters not since it will dissapear with the turning. If you wanted to use that piece for a project though, it would take some sanding to make it acceptable for flatness. Or is this where you use one of those mini power planes?

[ray hampton]

when you mentioned Elder, are you talking about elderberry ? elderberry should make good flutes since it is hollow

[Vernon Jenewein]

This is what an elder wand looks like,
So I don't know if it was from an eldeberry or not.
It references an actual tree.
http://images.wikia.com/harrypotter/images/c/c9/The_Elder_Wand.JPG

[Vernon Jenewein]

From some more research, it does appear that it "Elder" is from an Eldeberry shrub/tree. I would imagine it would have to be a large enough tree to get a decent branch from it. Elm is good, so is Hawthorne, Ash, and Holly. Harry Potter's wand was made of Holly.

[ray hampton]

I never seen a elderberry tree big enough to have any branches, maybe 5 or 6 feet tall

[Michael Mills]

I re-read the rules and do not know how this applies. Another forum is set up primarly as a exchange of wood (flat work or turning). You can Barter (swap wood), offer for sale, or make a post wanting to buy.
Do a google search for "wood barter".
Mods please delete this post if it isn't appropriate.

[Scott Hackler]

Vern,

I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to look, but I don't have any elm that long in my wood stash. I have an elm bowl blank, but it's only 11 1/2" wide. With a little checking on the ends it might yield a good 10 1/2" long spindle. I thought I had found a piece but while milling it down to 1 1/8" square I discovered it was silver maple! If that would help, you can have them. I think I got 7 - 15" long spindles out of the stock.

[Curt Stivison]

Vern,

I could cut some elm for you if you would like. I have some dead elms here on the farm that would be pretty dry or I could cut a live one that you can get it dried.

Curt