Richard M. Wolfe
06-01-2008, 9:32 AM
Well, I’ve run off at the mouth here quite a bit and realized I’ve not shown any of my work so thought I’d put this in as an example of a wood that’s not seen very often. Very common tree but people ignore it….and I would too, up till now. The photography from a year ago leaves something to be desired and I don’t know as I’ve gotten much better. This is a composite picture and the top is closer to the true color. And fine woodworking it’s not. OK, so much for the disclaimers…….
Over a year ago my woodworking partner came home with a big willow – I think it’s a black willow. I thought, now what are you going to do with ‘that thing’. Well, it’s here, so might as well cut it. The main trunk was about ten feet long and about 34” across the butt. It was green and weighed what you might expect green willow to weigh….seemingly 5% wood and 95% water. After taking a few ‘shaping cuts’ with chainsaws to let the mill head pass started slicing it into boards. First thing I noticed was the heartwood is a really pretty red color. The sapwood is thick so to get any amount of heartwood you need a big tree. (One edge of the tray has some sapwood.) Then we started looking closer. It turned out a considerable portion of the tree was curly. And not just ‘march in a line’ curly but twisted and really convoluted on some of it. We switched gears at that point and started cutting to hopefully get pieces to maximize the curl. As I recall the tree yielded about 500 ft of stock. We’ve got a bunch of bowl blanks and thick stuff as well as boards. One thing that’s good about willow is once it dried it’s very lightweight and easy to handle. Also due to interlocking grain it had very little checking or cracking. And a very odd thing about the wood, at least in this tree - we cut the boards to 1 ¼” to allow for a lot of shrinkage in drying. The wood dried to….about 1 ¼”. It lost the water but kept the same size.
Since the boards were pretty thick I decided to take one and make a tray from it. Since the wood is pretty soft (maybe a bit harder than white pine) what you see is a result of various sanders (angle grinder, ROS, etc) on the inside and a little routing on the outside. If I do another I’ll cut a template and route the inside…..it’s odd how ¾” sanded off 2 sq.ft of wood can yield enough dust to fill a 55 gal drum. Once I got the final shape I started finish sanding, and sanding, and sanding, and…..sigh, more sanding. And I don’t think I did enough finish sanding on part…that’s willow – really fuzzy. The finish is simply multiple coats of gloss wiping varnish; every day for about a week I’d put on a coat when I came home from work. I would have used more but it seemed to be losing some clarity. I’ll try something different like shellac next time. Thanks for looking. Oh yeah, trivia question: What is the traditional use for willow?
89760
Over a year ago my woodworking partner came home with a big willow – I think it’s a black willow. I thought, now what are you going to do with ‘that thing’. Well, it’s here, so might as well cut it. The main trunk was about ten feet long and about 34” across the butt. It was green and weighed what you might expect green willow to weigh….seemingly 5% wood and 95% water. After taking a few ‘shaping cuts’ with chainsaws to let the mill head pass started slicing it into boards. First thing I noticed was the heartwood is a really pretty red color. The sapwood is thick so to get any amount of heartwood you need a big tree. (One edge of the tray has some sapwood.) Then we started looking closer. It turned out a considerable portion of the tree was curly. And not just ‘march in a line’ curly but twisted and really convoluted on some of it. We switched gears at that point and started cutting to hopefully get pieces to maximize the curl. As I recall the tree yielded about 500 ft of stock. We’ve got a bunch of bowl blanks and thick stuff as well as boards. One thing that’s good about willow is once it dried it’s very lightweight and easy to handle. Also due to interlocking grain it had very little checking or cracking. And a very odd thing about the wood, at least in this tree - we cut the boards to 1 ¼” to allow for a lot of shrinkage in drying. The wood dried to….about 1 ¼”. It lost the water but kept the same size.
Since the boards were pretty thick I decided to take one and make a tray from it. Since the wood is pretty soft (maybe a bit harder than white pine) what you see is a result of various sanders (angle grinder, ROS, etc) on the inside and a little routing on the outside. If I do another I’ll cut a template and route the inside…..it’s odd how ¾” sanded off 2 sq.ft of wood can yield enough dust to fill a 55 gal drum. Once I got the final shape I started finish sanding, and sanding, and sanding, and…..sigh, more sanding. And I don’t think I did enough finish sanding on part…that’s willow – really fuzzy. The finish is simply multiple coats of gloss wiping varnish; every day for about a week I’d put on a coat when I came home from work. I would have used more but it seemed to be losing some clarity. I’ll try something different like shellac next time. Thanks for looking. Oh yeah, trivia question: What is the traditional use for willow?
89760