Wood too Nice to Cut up.

[Chip Lindley]

We must decide if we are greedy to hoard our cache of nice hardwood...OR...is there some *fear of failure* to use very nice planks for something mundane or otherwise not befitting of such quality?

Hmmm.... What to do with my four 8/4 x 16" x 14' long black walnut planks??? Fifteen years ago I only paid $90 at a farm auction for the lot. One is missing a chunk out of one end....about 6" x 48". A gunstock perhaps long ago? I have to wonder!

[Frank Drew]

I've got a stack of "special boards" around 3' wide and 2.5' tall of various lengths.

Doug, at first I read this as your having a stack of 3 foot wide boards! (You did mean that the stack is 3' wide, right?)

It wasn't all that long ago that you could still find Mahogany in that width, or very near it (30"+).

I absolutely HATE the idea of a wide special board getting ripped up into narrows for whatever minor application; that's what they make 1x4s for!

[Daren K Nelson]

I have it bad. I run a sawmill and "stash" special pieces...it's almost obscene. I have 24" wide curly maple slabs I will never sell, most likely never use. I did make a desk from one (picture attached) 24" wide walnut..etc.

I milled a log for a customer (from his yard) that was 200 bft of the prettiest curly walnut I have ever seen . 12" wide boards. I was sooo in love with that wood, I wished it was mine...of course it would have went in my stash and never came out though . He dropped the log off and I milled /kiln dried it while he went down south for a long vacation. I looked at that wood every day for a month until he came and picked it up. He did not even know what he had, I had to explain just how special it was, he is not a woodworker. It is still in his basement, I couldn't talk him out of even a piece. He had $140 invested in $2000 (very conservatively) worth of lumber.

[Sonny Edmonds]

Wood too nice to create with and display may as well have been left in the tree!
Some tree gave its life for that piece of wood you hoard and hide away.
Selfish person!
I have some of the most beautiful woods, but I make them into things to share the incredible beauty found inside of them.
And once in a while I run across someone who I can see appreciates the beauty I found there.
But to hoard it away?

[Daren K Nelson]

Wood too nice to create with and display may as well have been left in the tree!
Some tree gave its life for that piece of wood you hoard and hide away.
Selfish person!

I know that was not directed at me (maybe ), but I still feel it is important to make a point here. I am an "urban logger"...every single piece of wood I have ever owned was headed for a BURN PILE or TUB GRINDER or firewood processor. Linking your site seems to be a no-no here, but it's in my profile. I am a tree hugger with a sawmill if you will. I have never "killed" a tree, on the contrary I have given new life to 100,000's of bft of lumber through treecycling that others (tree services,municipalities, homeowners...) looked at as trash and wanted it disposed of. Gladly ...it's better hoarded than BURNED !

[Daren K Nelson]

Not to belabor the point...but. That picture of the curly maple in the desk that I said I had stashed some back for example, and in my avatar is me working on it. That was a yard tree the city had to cut down to clear a vacant lot. They had tried to give it to some guys to split for firewood so they would not have to move it (weighed close to 3 tons). No one wanted it because it was too big, 40"x14' if I remember right, they could not split it-just the limbs. So after laying for awhile it was headed to the country where they burn (used to until I got in the picture) trees that have to be removed. I caught them just before they lit it ablaze. It yielded 1000+ bft of that figured maple...good thing I decided to stash some, there would have been nothing but ashes if I was not around.
The walnut live edge slabs pictured in the same previous post was a storm felled tree. I am not going to derail this thread any more. Just wanted to say "selfish" does not fit some people who posted on this topic, I took offense sorry.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Wood too nice to create with and display may as well have been left in the tree!
Some tree gave its life for that piece of wood you hoard and hide away.
Selfish person!
I have some of the most beautiful woods, but I make them into things to share the incredible beauty found inside of them.
And once in a while I run across someone who I can see appreciates the beauty I found there.
But to hoard it away?

Sonny, I don't think it is hoarding for hoardings sake, rather recognizing a spectacular piece of wood, and having the good sense to save it for the right project. I'll be danged if I'm going to use some of my stash for this playroom cabinet project I'm slogging through now. Also, wood dosen't go "bad" for pete's sake. My stash could sit for hundreds of years waiting for the right project, but if it is squandered, it is gone for ever. You're right, a tree died, lets not waste it for the sake of "building something". Don't mean that to come off as rude, so please don't take it as such.

[Andrew Joiner]

I knew I wasn't alone. I love reading your stories. It is helping my recovery.
I will still fondle my special boards,but maybe I won't sleep with them anymore.
Just so you know I'am not hopeless,my desk that I'm at right now is Quilted Maple.

[Frank Drew]

Absolutely stunning piece of maple, Darren; thanks for posting the picture.

Wow! Just breathtaking.

[Rob Diz]

It's funny, but I ran out of room BEFORE I purchased a lot of about 500 bf of walnut. I only needed about 150 bf for a project for the wife. Turns out that there was a TON of wide thick boards in the lot. I ended up selling most that I couldn't use as a lot - included in that lot were some 8/4 slabs about 18 inches wide and 6 feet tall. I almost cried when the left the house. They were not perfect slabs, but they were pretty. Of course, I kept more than enough for my needs for the next ten years or so.

My BIL is a Forest Fire Fighter in Texas. He was taking a look at the stash over thanksgiving - and saw a piece 8/4 clean and straight no knots or checks about 24 wide and 28 high. I gave it to him on the spot, not because he had a need for it (his ww tools have been in storage for a few years), but because I knew he would simply appreciate having a nice thick slab of walnut in his stash for use some day. So I guess you could say I was simply cultivating the disease.

yes, it is a disease.

I have never actually finished a significant project with less wood on hand than I started with.

I have a trip next week that will take me near one of my lumber suppliers. I know he has some beautiful 8/4 curly maple, about 10 inches wide. I'm thinking of stopping for one of those boards, just 'cuz. I have no need for it, and nowhere to store it. But you all know that I need it.

[Todd Crawford]

I have a stack of 6/4 mahogony boards that I saved from the scrap pile of a job I was on a few years ago. They were used for spacers in some boiler tubes that had been shipped in from overseas. All of them were about 5 ft long, and about 8" wide. I saw them on the front of a fork lift on the way to the dump and honestly you couldn't even tell what kind of wood it was. I stopped the guy and asked him to pull over to my truck where I proceeded to load them up. When I got home I put a plane on one of them to try to figure out what I had. That is when I realized I had hit the motherload! My wife got home about that same time and asked what all that was in the back of my truck. She had never seen wood in it's rough cut, weathered beginning so when I told her that was her new stair treads, she replied "Not mine." After about two weeks of jointing, planing, sanding, finishing, she changed her mind. This is what we ended up with and I still have a pile that I will get around to using one day.

[Gary Herrmann]

My wife bought me a luthier grade quilted maple billet for my 40th birthday for some reason (I guess she does like me afterall). Someday I'll get into it, but I haven't come across the right project yet. My wife calls it George - after the Bugs Bunny Abominable Snowman cartooon.

"I will pat it and pet and and love it and call it George..."

I've gotten lucky a few times - mostly with found turning wood. Curly maple, curly pear, even a chunk of quilted cuban mahogany (ahh, friends that work for the city in S FL). I've gotten into all of it but the cuban mahogany so far. First bowl out of that will be for the person that sent it to me.

I also bought (maybe stole) a basketball sized cherry burl from my friend Tom Sontag as well. I'm waiting till I get a coring system before I touch that one...

I do appreciate beautiful wood and it is fun to pull out a board or stick and look at it, but I don't buy them just to have them - but that's just me. I marked up a stick of amazing fiddleback claro walnut just last night for bottlestoppers.

[Rob Diz]

Thanks for mentioning fiddleback.

You reminded me that I have a slab of fiddleback Koa I picked up at Aloha Woods in the extra five minutes I had to return the rental car at the nearby airport.

Now that board will need a special project . . . .

'cuz I spent more for that 6/4 slab than I have spent on entire lots of local cherry. Good thing I paid cash and LOML didn't ask how much that "thing" cost. Someday I'll make her something nice out of it. I just need to have a project that will justify actually cutting into that board. Lots of bookmatched veneer awaits.

[Gary Herrmann]

I have it bad. I run a sawmill and "stash" special pieces...it's almost obscene. I have 24" wide curly maple slabs I will never sell, most likely never use. I did make a desk from one (picture attached) 24" wide walnut..etc.

Ok Daren, based on your post and those pics, you need to post some pics of the stash. We'll be jealous, but I think we can take it.

[Keith Starosta]

I know that was not directed at me (maybe ), but I still feel it is important to make a point here. I am an "urban logger"...every single piece of wood I have ever owned was headed for a BURN PILE or TUB GRINDER or firewood processor. Linking your site seems to be a no-no here, but it's in my profile. I am a tree hugger with a sawmill if you will. I have never "killed" a tree, on the contrary I have given new life to 100,000's of bft of lumber through treecycling that others (tree services,municipalities, homeowners...) looked at as trash and wanted it disposed of. Gladly ...it's better hoarded than BURNED!

Abso-freaking-lutely!!!