Joe Adams
06-27-2014, 10:35 AM
I just wanted to give a shout out to SMC contributor Danny Hamsley and thank him for showing me and my brother around his sawmill in middle Georgia. He's retired from a big lumber company and just does this to keep active. He has a masters degree in Forestry and you could not hope to find a nicer guy to talk wood and woodworking with.
We first visited a year ago but were driving a rental and could only take home a 4-foot live edge, spalted Pecan slab and a similarly sized slab of Walnut crotch. I had never seen air-dried Walnut before and the color character is amazing compared to the commercially kiln (steam) dried stuff at the lumber yard. We even got to help him run his sawmill and cut some slabs off a beautiful Shumard Oak log.
What was cool this year is we brought the truck and were able to buy four live edge 2-inch thick slabs of crotch from the same Shumard Oak we helped slice. We also bought a 2-foot wide, 10-foot long 2-inch thick slab of quartersawn Sycamore with amazing figure. And to top it all off, a 5-inch thick 1-foot by 7-foot air dried Walnut slab that we plan to resaw and bookmatch into a table top.
We lusted after a stack of quartersawn White Oak but it is still air drying for at least another few months. I hope he'll save us some for the next trip. Danny has a stockpile of various woods drying under cover around his property so it's hard to choose what to take back to Texas. He also makes furniture so don't even try to talk him out of his private reserve of curly Cherry. Most of the logs he saws come from his property although some unusual specimens are sourced from local loggers.
I would encourage anyone in the area (or visiting relatives in Georgia like me) to contact him through Sawmill Creek and see about making a visit.
See you next year my friend!
We first visited a year ago but were driving a rental and could only take home a 4-foot live edge, spalted Pecan slab and a similarly sized slab of Walnut crotch. I had never seen air-dried Walnut before and the color character is amazing compared to the commercially kiln (steam) dried stuff at the lumber yard. We even got to help him run his sawmill and cut some slabs off a beautiful Shumard Oak log.
What was cool this year is we brought the truck and were able to buy four live edge 2-inch thick slabs of crotch from the same Shumard Oak we helped slice. We also bought a 2-foot wide, 10-foot long 2-inch thick slab of quartersawn Sycamore with amazing figure. And to top it all off, a 5-inch thick 1-foot by 7-foot air dried Walnut slab that we plan to resaw and bookmatch into a table top.
We lusted after a stack of quartersawn White Oak but it is still air drying for at least another few months. I hope he'll save us some for the next trip. Danny has a stockpile of various woods drying under cover around his property so it's hard to choose what to take back to Texas. He also makes furniture so don't even try to talk him out of his private reserve of curly Cherry. Most of the logs he saws come from his property although some unusual specimens are sourced from local loggers.
I would encourage anyone in the area (or visiting relatives in Georgia like me) to contact him through Sawmill Creek and see about making a visit.
See you next year my friend!