Ron Brese
05-27-2008, 10:22 AM
Some while back I displayed along with Bob Zajicek at the MWTCA meeting in Madison, Ga. I met a fellow there that was quite interested in one of my infill planes and the next week he called me and proposed a trade. It seems that he had this very old rosewood log that he had acquired and was interested in trading it and some ebony for the plane. After a careful evaluation of values we struck a deal in which I got the rosewood log, some ebony and some cash and he got the plane. Everyone walked away happy which is how all good business deals should end.
The story that accompanied the log intrigued me. He relayed the story as it was told to him and stated that of course there was no way to confirm the facts of the story, however I thought it was interesting and decided to publish the story here along with pics of the log and some of the first infill billets sawn out of a portion of the log.
The Story,
In the 1950s an artist fellow that had been studying with Picasso came back to the US. He was a sculptor and his medium was exotic hardwoods. He brought with him quite a stash of ebony and rosewood logs in sizes suitable for sculpting. Of course he had not made a name for himself in the art world and he was the epitome of the term starving artist. He fell behind on his rent and his landlord was about to evict him. This artist had touted to the landlord about the worth of the logs and so the landlord thought that maybe he could seize the logs to sell for back rent. Well this artist fellow got wind of the landlords intentions and moved one night under cover of darkness taking as many of the logs as he could with him. He stored them in an abandoned mobile home while looking for new accommodations that included room for a studio. The mobile home subsequently burned along with the logs contained. (cringing at the thought) The log I have is one that was left behind and the fellow I got it from purchased it from the landlord. So the log is old growth, probably been harvested for 60 or more years.
Now back to cutting the log,
It is very dense and hard and it took me quite a while to get a 10" length cut off off the end. It was too big to put in my band saw which is a 17 with 12 re-saw capacity so I'm having to take segments off and then put them into the band saw. I first attempted to cut it with a sawzall, this worked okay on the sapwood wood but when it hit the heartwood cutting slowed considerably. I then cut a kerf around the log with a circular saw outfitted with a carbide toothed blade. I was still quite a way from severing the section from the log so I tried the sawzall once again with limited success. My next attempt was with a sharp rip saw, the manual operated variety. This worked amazingly better any of the other methods. It took a while of sawing and resting and sawing some more but the progress was steady and much quieter than any of the prior attempts. Once I had worried the 10" section off the log I did a careful layout across the end of the log section and then went to my band saw and easily cut thru 10" of this old dried rosewood. As you can see in the pictures of the billets it has an inclusion in one side but there is still plenty of good material left in this section.
Once the billets were cut I checked the moisture content of this material. As I suspected it was quite dry ranging from 6.5 to 8 percent moisture content. I'll give this material a few days to relax and then it is destined to live with the confines of steel and brass plane bodies.
Ron Brese
The story that accompanied the log intrigued me. He relayed the story as it was told to him and stated that of course there was no way to confirm the facts of the story, however I thought it was interesting and decided to publish the story here along with pics of the log and some of the first infill billets sawn out of a portion of the log.
The Story,
In the 1950s an artist fellow that had been studying with Picasso came back to the US. He was a sculptor and his medium was exotic hardwoods. He brought with him quite a stash of ebony and rosewood logs in sizes suitable for sculpting. Of course he had not made a name for himself in the art world and he was the epitome of the term starving artist. He fell behind on his rent and his landlord was about to evict him. This artist had touted to the landlord about the worth of the logs and so the landlord thought that maybe he could seize the logs to sell for back rent. Well this artist fellow got wind of the landlords intentions and moved one night under cover of darkness taking as many of the logs as he could with him. He stored them in an abandoned mobile home while looking for new accommodations that included room for a studio. The mobile home subsequently burned along with the logs contained. (cringing at the thought) The log I have is one that was left behind and the fellow I got it from purchased it from the landlord. So the log is old growth, probably been harvested for 60 or more years.
Now back to cutting the log,
It is very dense and hard and it took me quite a while to get a 10" length cut off off the end. It was too big to put in my band saw which is a 17 with 12 re-saw capacity so I'm having to take segments off and then put them into the band saw. I first attempted to cut it with a sawzall, this worked okay on the sapwood wood but when it hit the heartwood cutting slowed considerably. I then cut a kerf around the log with a circular saw outfitted with a carbide toothed blade. I was still quite a way from severing the section from the log so I tried the sawzall once again with limited success. My next attempt was with a sharp rip saw, the manual operated variety. This worked amazingly better any of the other methods. It took a while of sawing and resting and sawing some more but the progress was steady and much quieter than any of the prior attempts. Once I had worried the 10" section off the log I did a careful layout across the end of the log section and then went to my band saw and easily cut thru 10" of this old dried rosewood. As you can see in the pictures of the billets it has an inclusion in one side but there is still plenty of good material left in this section.
Once the billets were cut I checked the moisture content of this material. As I suspected it was quite dry ranging from 6.5 to 8 percent moisture content. I'll give this material a few days to relax and then it is destined to live with the confines of steel and brass plane bodies.
Ron Brese