Jackpot!

[Glenn Kotnik]

A couple of days ago I noticed that a huge shaggy tree had been taken down on the grounds of the hospital where I work. So when I got off work I called the head of the maintenance and grounds department and asked if I could bring my chainsaw by and take some hunks for turning. He said sure, he didn't know of anyone else who wanted it. Later as I was cutting, I noticed the 8ft log I was sawing was 2ft. diameter, clear and solid. So now I wonder if there was a Wood Miser in its future! Well sorry Dude, but now there is a Oneway 1224 in its future. My wife was kind enough to help me lift the 200lb hunks into my truck. One was too heavy so I split it. The rest I cut about 14inches thick to allow us to heft them into the bed. 270952270951270950270949270953270954270955270956No w that I've gotten them home I need to seal the ends. I may just hose them down for tonight. I need some time to think and plan for turning them. They should last me quite a while. Any suggestions on how to handle these babies from here?

[Pat Scott]

Nice score! And your wife must be pretty strong, my wife won't even try to help me lift anything.

What kind of wood is it? As to what to do with it now all depends on what you like to turn. I'd process or rough turn it all as soon as you can, you don't want to lose any of the pieces to cracking. Seal the ends for sure, but get to it as soon as possible.

[Peter Blair]

Great gloat! Looks as if your truck is suffering a little!

I live your folding rule!

Can't help with what to do with it but be sure to split it, remove the pith before you seal the ends. I occassionally seal in the round but here in BC when the humidity is high I still have to split it within a month or two or I loose too much.

[Glenn Kotnik]

Thanks Pat. I haven't had much experience cutting logs into turning blanks so I appreciate any advise I can get. I hinted in my post that it was a huge shaggy tree and you can see in the pix the shaggy bark. Given the appearance of the logs and the color of the wood I believe it is a shagbark hickory. I'm sure it will take some sharp tools to turn it! I cut some smaller limb sections for spindle turning and plan to make chisel and tool handles from these. I am limited to 12" diameter turnings but that is plenty big enough for me. Given the 22-24" diameter of the pieces I cut, I should be able to turn some deep bowls and nice plates or shallower bowls. So today I will cut the sections into halves, thirds and quarters parallel to the pith, then seal the ends. From there I'm unsure what to do next. I know some people turn wood when it is still pretty green then dry later. I would like to get blanks that are fairly dry so I can store them for use over several years. Is this feasible? How much should I shape them before letting them season? Should I cut them round on the band saw, then seal and dry them? Thanks

[Bob Hamilton]

It is best to take a slab out of the middle that includes the pith rather than just cutting directly through the pith. On logs that size I would cut at least 2" out of the middle. The center slab can then have the pith removed from it as well, leaving two quartersawn boards that can be used in flat work or cut into spindle blanks. If it is hickory it could be a challenge to get it dry without splitting and cracking. I believe hickory has the largest difference in radial to tangential shrinkage of any north american hardwood.

Good Luck!
Bob

[Glenn Kotnik]

Got it Bob, thanks.

[Fred Belknap]

Glen it sure looks like hickory. My experience with hickory is it turns pretty nice when it is green so if you can, turn rough bowls while it is green. Store the blocks after sealing the ends in a dark, cool, dry place. It might last a year but plan on loosing some to cracks. Small endgrain bowls and HF out of hickory are neat and easy to sand and finish. If you leave it on the ground where it is damp it will get wormy and have some spalt but mostly worms. It is very heavy even when it is dry. Good luck and enjoy. I like turning hickory. I have been coating the whole block with Anchorseal hoping it will help keep it from cracking, not sure if it will work.

[Richard Coers]

Some of it looks great, other sections not so much. The big piece in the truck looks like it has a lightning strike repair, that odd bulge on the side. That can have a lot of damage (cracked) wood around it. Be careful in those sections. The next to last pic shows some rot/punky areas. Looks like a standing dead tree to me. You do have a plenty to turn, but definitely some firewood in there also. It almost looks like red maple to me. Have fun!

[Glenn Kotnik]

I'll got out Hoadley's book on wood identification. It looks like it should be fairly easy to differentiate Maple from Hickory since the hickories are ring-porous and the maples are diffuse-porous. I'll need to dust off my microscope. Some of it does have punky areas but much of the heartwood looked pretty solid. I'll know more when I start cutting. I'm going to take Fred's advise and seal the pieces and store them off the ground in the crawl space in our basement. The temperature stays about 55 degrees all year and the humidity is pretty high. Then I can see how they turn after a couple of months.

[Richard Coers]

If some of it is punky, you may be bringing some bugs into your crawl space with the wood. Even healthy trees have bugs in and under the bark. There are a lot of boring insects that lay eggs under the bark. They'll hatch out nicely in those damp conditions you have there! Almost everyone at least rough turns the wood while wet. I prefer to fully turn and let the bowls warp. It's a rare situation where I will purposely let it sit a couple months before turning. Especially pecan and hickory that can really tough to turn when dry. It really gets hard, and seems to dull the tools quickly.

[robert baccus]

Throw them under a plastic tarp and water every 2 weeks. The most it can do is spalt in a year. Endseal when convenient?.

[Pat Scott]

We don't have Hickory in CO, at least if we do I've never turned it. I've done flat woodworking with Hickory before, but haven't turned any.

24" diameter is a nice size for sure! Here's a couple of ideas on how I process a log. I turn mostly utility items (bowls, plates, platters):

1. The black dot in the center is the pith, which you do not want. The black square around the pith can be whatever size (2" to 4") depending on how much cracking has occurred already. I'm just trying to show that you don't want it.

2. If you want to make plates or platters, the best wood is quartersawn. You could get some nice dinner plates on either side of the pith (red rectangle). If your pith "square" is 3"-4" wide, you might be able to get 2 plates per red rectangle (dashed line). Or instead of plates you could get some peppermill blanks from this area as well (if it's 3"-4" wide).

3. The blue rectangles on either side of the pith could be nice size 24" platters. But since you can only turn 12" maximum, each platter blank can be turned into two more plates if you want. I cut my platter blanks at about 2.5" wide, and once I clean up both sides from the chainsaw I hope to end up with about a 2" blank to dry. I cut my plate blanks at around 2" thick and after clean up hope to end with 1.5" thick blanks to dry.

4. The brown half-circles are bowl blanks. You can do one big one (if your lathe could turn that big), or as you can see on the RH side I've laid out two 12" bowls. So with your lathe you could potentially end up with four 12" bowls (I'm not accounting waste for bark, etc).
271025

Or you could make one 12" bowl and a bunch of smaller 6" bowls.
271026


Mike Mahoney has a YouTube video showing how he processes a log which you might find helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqEyeijOyCU

[Glenn Kotnik]

Thanks Pat, you're really helpful.